Floor Statements

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

Mr. Chairman, I did not vote for the original war resolution. I thought it was ill-advised to delegate to the President authority that the Congress had, and I thought it was ill-advised for the President to proceed to war without world support and support from the U.N. in the absence of an imminent threat to the United States.

I had some reservations, because people were saying that there was an imminent threat. The President was saying that. But I did not think we should rush into this war in the first place. I have seen nothing since then to change my mind about that.

I think we were ill-advised to proceed to this war in a hasty fashion without the support of the U.N., and I think our policies continue to be flawed to stay there and to pursue this war without world support.

The only reason that I have vexed about this vote is that our soldiers are there, and they are in harm's way. But I think to support this resolution would be to sanction the flawed policies of this administration. Consequently, my intention is to vote no on this proposed appropriation.

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

Mr. Speaker, I want to first thank my colleague, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Watson), for introducing and being the lead sponsor of the bill which would award a Congressional Gold Medal to Dr. Dorothy Height.

I cannot think of a time that I have felt more humble to be in control of time and to pay tribute to a great individual. And I cannot think of anybody that is living today that deserves a high honor of this kind more than Dorothy Height. So it is a great pleasure for me to be here and to have been asked to control time on our behalf.

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Watson), the original sponsor of the bill.

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank), ranking member of the Committee on Financial Services.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Indiana (Ms. Carson).

Mr. Speaker, I yield for the purpose of making a unanimous consent request to the gentleman from California (Mr. Lantos).

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/4\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee).

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton).

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

Mr. Speaker, my mother used to say, and she was a wise person, that we should honor people while we can or give them their flowers while they can still smell them, and Dorothy Height is still among us. So it is a great pleasure to be able to pay tribute to her while she can still hear the words and read the words and understand the words, and she has been with us through so many decades of service through a time when she has had substantial impact on our history, through contact with extraordinary people. In her recent autobiography called ``Open Wide the Freedom Gates,'' she describes contacts with W.E.B. DuBois; Marcus Garvey; Eleanor Roosevelt; Mary McLeod Bethune; Adam Clayton Powell, Sr.; Langston Hughes; W.C. Handy; and a host of other people. And she describes her involvement with the March on Washington as the only female member who was kind of in the back room in the organizing committee associated with that march.

I think she has contributed so much, and more recently her organization of

the Black Family Reunion, with which my son was associated and got to know her. Every time I see Dr. Dorothy Height now, she never asks how I am doing. She is always asking about my son. So it is just a great pleasure to pay tribute to and support the Congressional Gold Medal for such a wonderful heroine.

There is no living person today who deserves this congressional merit more than Dorothy Height. It is just a tremendous honor to be able to pay tribute to her, and I encourage my colleagues to support this bill.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman, the gentleman from Maryland (Chairman Cummings), for yielding and for organizing this Special Order this evening to talk about the Congressional Black Caucus's position on the war and to make some commonsense points about what that position should be and what the Congress's position should be.

Based on what my colleagues have already said, it is quite apparent that the Congressional Black Caucus has standing to be here for at least two reasons. Number one, we have standing because only 34 out of 38 of our Members voted against the original war resolution, against a backdrop where we had set out five clear principles that we would be measuring the President's original request to delegate authority to him to go to war against. And almost as if we had some crystal ball at that time, the fifth of the five principles stated as follows: it said, any post-strike plan for maintaining stability in the region would be costly and would require a long-term commitment. It was as if we were forecasting, even back in October of 2002, the exact circumstance in which we find ourselves today.

We did not have any crystal ball; what we had was common sense that told us if the President went this course alone without a worldwide, international coalition, we were likely to be there by ourselves, paying for the war and the postwar responsibilities by ourselves; that we would destabilize what was already an unstable situation in the Middle East even further, which has turned out to be the case.

Our own common sense in our communities says, hey, you simply do not fight somebody unless you have exhausted every possible, conceivable effort, short of fighting somebody. I mean, that is just a commonsense rule of the street where many of us have had to exist. You just simply do not go and fight somebody, and you do not go and make a unilateral attack against somebody without a demonstrated, imminent threat that somebody is getting ready to slap you or your mama. I mean, that is basically commonsense principles that we outlined in October of 2002.

So we have standing to be here, not because we came to say we told you so, but because we applied to our own voting pattern in the original war resolution the principles that we thought were commonsense principles that should govern our country. Unfortunately, this administration failed to apply those principles; and, as a result, we are here today.

Now, I want to zero in on several of the new eight principles that we established a couple of weeks ago to evaluate the President's $87 billion additional request. First of all, we reaffirmed our commitment to the original principles that we had adopted back in October of 2002. We were not starting from scratch; we were working in a context where if we knew that if the President had followed those original principles, we would not be here today. But the second principle is quite interesting, because despite the fact that the President had not followed our principles, our second new principle was to say that despite the President's failure to follow our original statement of principles in his decisions leading to the war, we expressed our full resolve to support and protect our troops and their families. So as both of my colleagues who have spoken to this point have indicated, there should be no question about our commitment to the troops.

But before we give a President who has already demonstrated that he is inept and demonstrated that he is unwilling to follow commonsense principles for an additional $87 billion, we think some other things ought to happen.

First of all, we think this administration should provide an accounting of all funds expended to date that were previously approved by the Congress, including details about all contracts for work in or related to Iraq. In my community, I do not know about my colleagues, but in my community,

there are substantial questions being raised about how Halliburton can end up with a contract in excess of $1 billion in Iraq, and now people are asking, well, why can the Iraqi people not do some of this work? If we are trying to help them, why is it that we are being so paternalistic that only the United States can do the work; we will not even hire any of them to do the work on the ground? We are hiring U.S. companies, giving none of our small businesses, our minority businesses the opportunity to participate in those work opportunities?

Our next principle was the President should provide sufficient details about how the proposed funding will be spent to enable Congress and its committees to evaluate separately funding proposed for the protection and maintenance of our troops, which all of us agree is a high moral imperative. Despite the fact that the President did this unilaterally, our troops did not make that decision. We have got to protect them. But we want a separate accounting of the money that is going to be spent on the proposed rebuilding of Iraq.

Now, why do we want a separate accounting? Common sense again. We have neighborhoods in our own country that have inadequate plumbing, inadequate electricity. We had our own blackout. And if we are going to provide assistance to Iraq, we ought to be focusing on providing assistance in the same kind of settings in our own communities that we are providing in Iraq. We ought to make sure that we are not giving Iraq more than Iraq had before we even ever bombed there. At least show us what it is that we destroyed by bombing them; maybe we have some moral obligation to rebuild that part of Iraq. But for the life of me, I cannot figure out why we would think Iraq would be a higher priority to fund basic infrastructure than other countries with substantially less per capita incomes.

There are many countries throughout this world that have a lot less per capita income than Iraq, and there are a lot of countries that I would get to helping and providing assistance to before I would get down to Iraq, trying to provide this assistance solely against a backdrop where we have gone in and bombed that country.

We think the President should provide an accounting of Iraqi resources which we were told in advance the country was going to apply to rebuilding Iraq. Iraq has probably got more oil under the ground than most of the assets that we have here in our country. Why can they not use their own assets to help pay for the cost of rebuilding? I mean, that is just common sense. We try to tell people not to be paternalistic. I mean, you have to want to help yourself before we want to give you anything. That is what we have said to the American people. That is what we have said to people on welfare right here in our country. You got to get up and work yourself and use your own resources, so why can we not apply the same principles to Iraq that we apply here at home?

These are just commonsense principles, Mr. Speaker; and it is just impossible for us to go back into our communities and say that we should be doing this, providing another blank check to this President, without a full accounting for the $79 billion that has already been spent and without any accounting for how he is going to pay for the additional $87 billion.

Now, we have been saying, all of us in the Congressional Black Caucus have been saying for months that if this is a priority, then we ought to pay for it as a Nation and not pass the debt along to our children. Every dime of this $87 billion is going straight to the deficit and coming straight from borrowed money. The effect of that is to pass that obligation along to our children, rather than paying for it ourselves.

Now, who ought to be paying for it? I think who ought to be paying for it is the people that we gave the tax break to this year who are making over $150,000 to $200,000 a year. If they think this is a priority, if the country thinks this is a priority, then let us pay for it as a priority. So we think the tax cuts should be rolled back, especially at the highest levels, and maybe even at the middle-income levels, to have all of us share in the sacrifice, if we think this is a national priority. Those are the kinds of questions that we have asked this President to focus on and to provide attention to and to give us information about as a condition for asking us to support an additional $87 billion.

Mr. Speaker, I will say to my colleagues that this Congressional Black Caucus has applied commonsense principles, the principles that we grew up in our communities understanding and abiding by; the principles that we have heard applied in our own country in communities by the people who make decisions.

You have got to be responsible yourself before we are going to be responsible for you. And we think that is a good, good criteria to measure this request against. And unless we get answers and responses to these principles, these eight principles that we have set out to evaluate this request against, I think you are going to see the Congressional Black Caucus vote in as unified a fashion against the $87 billion request as we were against the original war resolution. And that is where we should be out of responsibility to our constituents, and our Nation, and our children, and the future of this country.

I thank the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cummings) for convening this Special Order and for yielding time to me. I could go further, but I know there are other people who want to talk about this. And there are some other important principles that I need to touch on, but I am sure my colleagues are going to hit them before this Special Order is over.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize and congratulate Taiwan on its forthcoming National Day. In recent years, Taiwan has impressed the world with its spectacular economic and political accomplishments. Even though Taiwan has many challenges ahead, I am confident Taiwan will continue to prosper both economically and politically now and in the future.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 49, the Internet Tax Nondiscrimination Act. H.R. 49 would permanently extend the existing moratorium against taxes on Internet access by all State and local governments, including those that were previously grandfathered by the Internet Tax Freedom Act. Although this bill will necessarily result in the loss or potential loss of revenue to some States, it will promote the continued development, emergence and widespread access to the Internet and it will do so in a fair and technologically neutral manner.

During the full committee markup of H.R. 49, I, together with the chairman of the Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law, the gentleman from Utah, offered an amendment to help clarify the meaning of Internet access and to put an end to the current confusion that has led to discriminatory and inconsistent State taxation on Internet access. The bill before us today incorporates that amendment and is the product of industry-wide and bipartisan negotiations. The principle I pursued in offering the amendment was simple. If we are to prohibit taxes on Internet access, we must do so regardless of how that access is provided. Otherwise, we would give a competitive advantage to those providers covered by the moratorium over those providers that remained subject to taxation. This would limit the choices of consumers and raise the costs of alternative means of accessing the Internet, such as DSL. By making the moratorium applicable to all Internet service providers, we have created a level playing field for the consumer. In the process, we have had no intention to otherwise undermine State and local telecommunications tax bases.

Indeed, I, along with the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt) and other colleagues on the subcommittee, have insisted throughout that we remain mindful of the fiscal crisis currently confronting many of our States. Toward that end, Chairman Cannon has agreed to conduct hearings this month on the States' attempt to establish a unified tax system that would enable them to impose and collect sales taxes on transactions over the Internet in a manner that is fair and manageable. I commend Chairman Cannon for his commitment to those hearings and look forward to working toward a solution to the streamlining issue.

In closing, I believe that H.R. 49 ensures that the ban on Internet access taxes is neutral as to technology, speed and provider.

I believe that the bill will lower costs to the consumer, enhance competition, clarify for State and local governments the type of services subject to tax, and facilitate narrowing the digital divide that presently impedes access to the Internet in disadvantaged communities. I urge my colleagues to support H.R. 49.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Conyers), ranking member of the full committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee), a member of the Committee on the Judiciary.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Green).

Mr. Speaker, I also yield to the gentleman from New Hampshire (Mr. Bass) for 1 minute.

The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Ose.) The gentleman from New Hampshire (Mr. Bass) is recognized for 2 minutes.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me time.

Mr. Speaker, I will say that I am not a member of the Committee on Ways and Means so I thought I would take this opportunity to say what I have to say on the rule itself.

There are some things in this bill that cause me some heartburn and there are some things in this bill that I think are very valuable. And I am not sure exactly which one is taking precedence for me on the bill itself, but I did want to thank the Committee on Ways and Means for addressing a concern that had been raised about the administrative expense part of this bill by the Morehead Foundation, which is a major scholarship giving foundation in North Carolina. The Committee on Ways and Means addressed their concern, and I wanted to acknowledge that and thank them for doing that.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Moore), a valued member of the committee who was chairman of the Democratic task force on this bill.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel) who has had such a tremendous impact on this bill, particularly the medical privacy portions of the bill. He has been a stalwart.

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

Mr. Chairman, in 1996, or when the original fair credit reporting bill was passed, which I do think was 1996, there was quite a bit of controversy about whether the Federal Government should be the controlling entity with respect to these kinds of credit issues. You had your classic States rights versus Federal Government debate. That has been much less of a debate this time because over time we have come to realize that commerce, both intrastate and interstate, is substantially impacted by the availability of credit. Just about everybody is using credit in commerce. Nobody is paying cash anymore, or seldom are people paying cash. So the argument about whether the Federal Government has a legitimate role in this fair credit process kind of has gone by the board over the years and was less of an issue in this debate and gave the committee in my estimation the opportunity to focus on really creating a comprehensive kind of approach to dealing with credit in this country, dealing with some of the problems that people face when credit reporting agencies get the wrong information, dealing with identity theft and medical privacy, and the whole range of issues that can come into play when a credit transaction is about to take place.

I think the gentleman from Ohio (Chairman Oxley) and the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank) have done just a magnificent job of hearing all of the input from all of the different sides and coming together on a bill that came out of committee with not unanimous support, but virtually unanimous support.

Now, there are some things that may be tweaked between the committee process and the floor, and there might be some need to change one or two things that have been agreed upon, but there are some amendments that I think could have a negative effect on this kind of bipartisan agreement that has characterized this bill.

So I hope that as we go forward into the amendment process, all of us will remember how hard we worked to keep this a bipartisan bill, to deliver a bill to the Senate that had just broad-based support so they would not sit there and not do anything and let the authorization run out. We need to maintain this bill in its current form as much as possible, unless the Chair and ranking member have agreed to amendments. I hope that my colleagues will keep that in mind.

Mr. Chairman, it is time for us to pass this bill, move it over to the Senate, and hope that they will produce a product that will keep credit available to people in this country on a set of fair and equitable rules.

Mr. Chairman, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank).

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

Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the Kilpatrick amendment, in strong support of it in fact. I cannot think of many occasions when I have had more phone calls than following the President's State of the Union Address and letters from people throughout my Congressional district, some of them Republicans and Democrats, applauding the fact that the President was finally beginning, it appeared, to take some steps to live out or live up to his commitment to be a compassionate conservative.

My response to them was, well, I am also delighted by the statements that the President made in his State of the Union Address about making a substantial commitment to fight HIV and AIDS, but we should be not too effervescent about this because I had seen by that time a President who had gotten all of the rhetorical benefit out of making a pledge to leave no child behind, and I had seen this House coalesce, Republicans and Democrats alike, around that commitment to leave no child behind and to pass an authorization bill only to find the President come back in the next round appropriations or budget round and not put money into his budget to honor the commitment that had been made.

I expressed concern to my constituents who called that the same thing could occur with respect to the commitment to HIV and AIDS. I never really expected that to happen, but if you look at what is happening now, the exact same thing seems to have happened. We have gotten a statement of commitment from the President for a $15 billion fund over 5 years. We have gotten an authorization passed by a bipartisan coalition in this House to that $15 billion, and now the gamesmanship starts to be played because straight out of the shute the commitment is not being funded at the level at which it was made.

Now, I am a big supporter of the Millennium Challenge Fund, and so it is not an easy vote to talk about taking money from the Millennium Challenge Account and transferring it to this purpose. But I do understand that if we do not do this up front and now, we will be paying more later and more people will be dying later.

I am told that by spending $3 billion in 2004 and 2005, the U.S. can prevent an additional 2.3 million people from contracting the HIV virus in those 2 years alone, which means that the U.S. will save approximately $1.3 billion per year on the anti-retroviral therapies those individuals would eventually require for their treatment. So even if ones looks at this as a business proposition rather than as a compassion proposition, spending money early to save money later is kind of like making a commitment to preventative medicine as opposed to reactive treatment, a last ditch method, which is not uncharacteristic of our policies in this country but I think is very short-sighted on our part.

Congress has passed the authorization, but the public should know that an authorization means absolutely nothing without money appropriated to fund what has been authorized. I think we have got to live up to it. I encourage my colleagues to support the Kilpatrick amendment as an important step in that direction.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlemen for yielding me this time to give me an opportunity to express myself on this resolution.

We obviously are all supportive of the resolution dealing with Habitat for Humanity and encouraging our colleagues to participate in the effort here in the District of Columbia. We are supportive of anything that does decent and affordable housing for people in this country.

Mr. Speaker, it is for that reason that we are so perplexed by the President's decision not to go forward with the Hope VI project by zeroing out Hope VI and saying that Hope VI has apparently served its purpose in this country.

I just came from a meeting with a group of students, one of whom was Ms. Audrey Evans who is a student at North Carolina A&T State University, and without knowing I was coming here, she said I want to commend you on the Hope VI program. She said she was raised in public housing, and our commitment to Hope VI helped to change her life because putting public housing in communities and allowing her to be exposed to people around her who are interested in succeeding educationally and economically and personally is something that has meant so much to her.

Throughout America, we have heard these stories about how successful Hope VI has been. On a bipartisan basis in our committee, just like both of these gentlemen have yielded me time, we are perplexed as to why such a successful program, which coincidentally was a Republican program instituted by Secretary Kemp when he was Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, how could we terminate such a program as this?

We are supportive of this resolution, but we also want this administration to be committed to housing in general in this country.

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

Mr. Chairman, I have followed my colleagues' debate about this, particularly my colleague on the Democratic

side, the gentleman from Virginia, who says that there are no substantive changes in this bill, there are only procedural changes, and that this is a modest change.

The thing that is amazing about that is the modest change is going to move a tremendous volume of cases from the State court to the Federal courts, which is exactly why the Federal judges are opposed to this.

If this is only procedural in nature, I am not sure that I, for the life of me, can understand why we are doing it. If this is only process, it would seem to me that we should be able to get the same result in the Federal court or the State court, because if we listen to what the supporters of this bill are saying, they are not making any substantive changes.

Now, I used to think that I understood my Republican colleagues when they said that they believed in States' rights, and that when we have the level of government or a judicial system that is close to the people, that is where we are likely to get the best kinds of results in cases.

Why, then, if we follow that theory, would we take all of the cases that are now being tried in State court and pick them up and move them into Federal court? For some reason, there is something wrong with that picture. They say the rights of the parties will be carefully preserved in the Federal court. I think that is what I heard my friend, the gentleman from Virginia, say. Well, does that mean that the rights of the parties for all of these years have not been carefully preserved in the State court? I thought that is what the Republican Party stood for, taking things back to the local and State level. I thought they believed in States' rights.

They said, well, if we move to Federal court, we are going to get fairness. We are going to get fairness. They have also said, for some reason, if we move the cases into Federal court we are going to get fairness. The opposite of that is if we leave them in the State court somehow we are not going to get fairness. If we are not changing the substance, then why are they doing this? Why are they doing this?

So this must be about the results that some people are getting that they are not happy with. I am telling the Members, I think if we have the same case in Federal court or State court, we ought to get the same result. That is the way it has always been, and that is the way it would be in the absence of this new bill. I encourage my colleagues to oppose the bill.

Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the gentleman yielding me time.

Every time a black Member of Congress gets up to talk about an issue like this, it always becomes a race debate; but I want to tell the gentleman that he is absolutely right.

We used to file every race discrimination case in America in the Federal court, but the law allows those cases to be filed in the State courts, too. And in many cases now, because the States have started appointing judges who came out of this century as opposed to the 19th and 18th century in their racial opinions, then you can get a fair trial in the State courts. And I think you can get a fair trial in the State courts on this issue if you will let the State courts do what they are supposed to do.

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

Yes, Mr. Speaker.

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

Mr. Speaker, I have not been involved in the debate up to this point on the proposed constitutional amendment, but I want to commend the chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary and my colleagues who have conducted this debate up to this point on the quality of the debate. This is always a debate which I think has the capacity to bring out the best of the Members of our body. It does not always do that because there are strongly held positions, and sometimes emotion overtakes the day and we see the debate deteriorate. There have been instances when that has happened today, but by and large, I think this has been a high-quality debate, and I want to compliment my colleagues for maintaining the high quality of that debate.

I was, at one point, the ranking member on the Subcommittee on the Constitution, occupying the position now held by the gentleman from New York (Mr. Nadler); and during my time in service as the ranking member of that subcommittee, I realized that the quality of the debate on this proposed constitutional amendment was not the kind of quality that I really wanted to be involved in.

What I saw was that Members who supported the proposed constitutional amendment would come to the floor and they would claim that Members who opposed the constitutional amendment were somehow unpatriotic; and Members who opposed the proposed constitutional amendment and were on the opposite side from the proponents of the amendment would come to the floor, and they would accuse the other side of being somehow unpatriotic. And I would have to admit that when I first became a party to this debate, I was a part of that name-calling process.

I thought that anybody who really supported the first amendment to the Constitution had to respect, even if they did not admire or like, they had to respect the right of people who wanted to express themselves in opposition to various kinds of injustices that were taking place in our society by expressing themselves verbally, expressing themselves through political action, expressing themselves by even burning or desecrating the American flag.

I thought it was a fairly simple proposition because I was not listening very carefully to the people who were on the other side of that debate, and I was not honoring the strong positions and commitments that they held to the fact that the flag was somehow different and that burning or desecrating the flag was somehow different than other kinds of free speech that citizens could engage in.

And then I started to listen to what the other side was saying, and I started to study this issue with a little more intensity, and I concluded that it could not possibly be the case that you could have a five-person majority on a United States Supreme Court that had nine members, and the court was split five people on one side and four people on the other side, and this not be a very, very difficult issue.

Can Members imagine that Justice Scalia supports the position that I am advocating here that when one burns the flag, they are engaging in protected speech; yet Justice Rehnquist, somebody who I think most people think is pretty close philosophically to Justice Scalia, takes exactly the opposite position.

I tried to imagine during the course of that debate whether Justice Scalia ever looked at Justice Rehnquist and said, ``You are unpatriotic''; or on the other hand, whether Justice Rehnquist looked at Justice Scalia and said, ``You are unpatriotic.''

So I started to listen to my good friend, the gentleman from California (Mr. Cunningham), and the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Sam Johnson) and what he was saying, and I said, those Members believe as vigorously in the position they are asserting as the Members on our side believe in the position we are asserting, and we could have a high-quality debate about this flag burning amendment if we honored each other's positions and opinions and really came in and talked about the merits of this proposed constitutional amendment as opposed to calling each other unpatriotic.

So I decided I would offer an amendment which simply says, not inconsistent with the first article of amendment to this Constitution, the Congress shall have power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States.

I thought that if we framed the issue in that context, we could really have an honest debate not only about what the physical desecration of the flag might consist of, but we could have an honest debate about what is or is not protected by the first amendment.

Now, I should say straight off that my opinion is that adding to the underlying proposed constitutional amendment, which itself says the Congress shall have the power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States, simply adding to that that whatever statutory act we take as a Congress must be consistent with the first amendment to the Constitution, I pretty much assumed was a given. And a number of my colleagues who have supported the underlying proposed constitutional amendment have said, we do not want to do harm to the first amendment, we are not trying to cut off speech. So it seems to me that at some point, even if we pass the underlying proposed constitutional amendment that we are debating here, the one that says that Congress shall have the power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States, that at some point the Supreme Court is going to be called upon to make that constitutional amendment reconciled with the first amendment, which says that this Congress shall make no law that tramples on the right of free speech.

So it may be that the amendment that I am offering here is kind of a redundancy. I am just basically saying that whatever we do as a Congress to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag must be done consistently with the first amendment to the Constitution, not anything revolutionary here.

Well, what does the first amendment mean? I thought I knew what the first amendment meant. I had a good law school education from what they tell me is one of the best law schools in the country, Yale University. Some of my colleagues will differ about whether it is the best or the second best or in the top 10 or in the top 30, but most people agree that it is at least one of the good universities, one of the good law schools in the country; and I will tell Members, Mr. Robert Bork was my constitutional law professor. We had some free-wheeling discussions in that class about what the first amendment meant. I thought once I got out of law school, I understood fully what the first amendment was all about.

And then I went back to North Carolina, and I went into the practice of law, and one day my senior law partner, a gentleman by the name of Julius Chambers, came to me and said, I want you to go down to eastern North Carolina and represent some Native Americans who have been charged with parading and threatening with a tomahawk in a demonstration that has taken place out there. They have been

charged with resisting arrest and all of the things that people get charged with when the police do not like what they are out there parading about, and these Native Americans had been arrested, four or five of them had been arrested. And my senior law partner sent me to eastern North Carolina to defend them against the criminal charges.

I did not know much more about those criminal charges until I got down to eastern North Carolina, and I sat down with my clients, and as I started to talk to them about what they were demonstrating about, they looked at me and they said, well, we did not want to go to school with black people. So we were out there demonstrating against going to school with black people. So I kind of swallowed hard and finished that day of activity, and I went back to my law office in Charlotte and I confronted my senior law partner and said, Julius, why would you send me down to eastern North Carolina as a black man to defend people who were out there demonstrating against going to school with black people?

Julius Chambers looked me straight in the eye, and he told me that day what the first amendment was all about. He simply said to me, ``Don't you believe in the first amendment?''

Those are words that I have never forgotten. That same law firm represented the Ku Klux Klan when they wanted the right to demonstrate and it was unpopular.

This is a difficult issue, and there are patriots on both sides of this issue. This is not about whether one side has a monopoly on patriotism or the other side has a monopoly on patriotism. This is a difficult issue because we love the flag and the one kind of common theme that I was able to gather from all of this discussion over all these years because we have been debating this constitutional amendment for 5 or 6 or 7 or 8 or 9 years. Ever since I have been here, it seems like, we have this constitutional amendment.

But the one thing that I think we all have agreed upon is that none of us like people who burn the flag. We are all patriots. There are 435 of us in this body. Every single one of us represents over 600,000 people. Can you imagine 600,000 people sending somebody to this Congress who was not patriotic? This, my friends, is not about whether you are a patriot or not. It is about your idea of what the first amendment truly means. It could not be that you could have Justice Brennan, Justice Marshall, Justice Blackmun, Justice Scalia and Justice Kennedy saying that this is protected speech when you burn the flag in certain contexts and them be not patriotic. These men are not unpatriotic. And it could not be that Justice Rehnquist and Justice Stevens and Justice White and Justice O'Connor are out to lunch on this issue, either. This is a difficult issue. And I think the important thing here is that we should not minimize the difficulty of the issue and we should not minimize each other because some of us happen to be on one side of this issue and some of us happen to be on the other side.

I value the first amendment, not that the people on the other side do not value it, too. I am sure they do. But in the process of having the Congress draft and pass a law to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag, the last thing I want is for us to do it in such a way that violates the first amendment to the Constitution. That amendment has been there for years and years and years and it has served us well. Nobody has tested this new amendment that is being offered here today which says the Congress shall have power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag. Who knows what the United States Supreme Court might read into that. But what I can tell you is that our first amendment has served this country well. And people have fought and died for the right of people to express themselves. Maybe they do not like them expressing themselves by burning the flag, but it is considered by some people protected speech. And it cannot be, even in current day, more recent times, that Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, who happens to believe that this proposed constitutional amendment is unnecessary and ill advised, surely we would not dare to call him unpatriotic.

Whatever we do, my colleagues, I simply implore us to do it consistent with the first amendment to the Constitution. And if we are able to do that, then I think we will have served our country well. What I suspect is that Congress wants to just, let's pass this amendment and leave the difficult part, which is crafting something that really prohibits the physical desecration of the flag without trampling on the first amendment, to a future time. Let us just finesse that issue. This proposed amendment in the nature of a substitute does not allow us to finesse it. What it says is that whatever we do when it comes time to start drafting our statute that prohibits the physical desecration of the flag must be done consistent with the first amendment to the Constitution.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott).

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 30 seconds to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Corrine Brown).

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

Mr. Speaker, I think the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Davis) hit the nail on the head that this is about our system. I have the utmost confidence in our system. This is not really about those two Supreme Court opinions, because a different composition of the Supreme Court may well say that flag burning is not prohibited, that it is protected speech or is not protected speech. The first amendment will continue to say what it says.

But I respect the system under which we operate that allows the Supreme Court to be the ultimate arbiter of whether we have violated the first amendment or not.

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

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the chairman yielding, because the chairman has made that point several times. Does the chairman understand that future Supreme Courts may, in fact, have a completely different interpretation of that, and that my amendment does not say anything about those decisions? It just respects the system under which we are operating.

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. Speaker, I rise today to honor the residents of Rowan County, North Carolina, part of which is located in my congressional district, as they celebrate the 250th anniversary of the founding of their county. Rowan County was founded in 1753, more than 20 years before the American Revolution. Today Rowan County has around 135,000 residents and is a thriving part of North Carolina's Piedmont. Salisbury, the county seat, is known as the hometown of the Food Lion grocery store chain, Cheerwine soft drinks and my new colleague in the Senate, Senator Elizabeth Dole. I always look forward to visiting Rowan County and was planning to ride in their parade this afternoon had the House schedule allowed that to happen.

I wish all the best to the Rowan County residents as they gather this weekend to celebrate the Rowan 250 Fest, with the theme of ``History's Crossroads''--looking back at Rowan County's rich history and looking forward to a bright future.

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

I first want to associate myself with the remarks that the gentleman made so eloquently in his statement. I am sure that both of us throughout the course of the day will be subjected to a number of phone calls saying that we are antigun. I personally do not think that is what this debate is about or should be about. The debate is about the bill that is in front of us and what it does to legal rights of people that have been recognized throughout history.

I am sure that my staff in the office is prepared for the barrage of phone calls, but I hope we can keep this debate based on what is before us at this point.

I am going to reserve my comments about the bill itself to the general debate on the bill, but I did want to rise in opposition to the rule reported by the Committee on Rules on this bill.

Twelve Democratic amendments were timely submitted to the Committee on Rules. Of those 12, 10 were offered by members of the Committee on the Judiciary, and five of the 12 were made in order under this rule. I am the first to admit that that is a better record than the Committee on Rules has enjoyed throughout this Congress, and some people say I should be happy about that. But the process by which this bill came to the Committee on Rules and now comes to the floor leads me to be concerned that the rule does not do justice to us as Members or to the public.

The bill first came before the Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law, on which I serve as the ranking member, one day before the full committee markup. There was no markup of the bill in the subcommittee, and the hearing was conducted at a disadvantage by the fact that two of the witnesses' statements arrived late, one coming the night before the hearing and one coming the morning of the hearing.

Under these circumstances, the full committee markup provided the sole

opportunity for all Members, not just Democrats and not just those with concerns about the bill but all Members of the Committee on the Judiciary, to speak to the merits and concerns, or even in support of the legislation.

But that never happened in the full committee, either. There was no deliberative process that brought this bill to the floor. There was no debate on what the various provisions of the bill mean. There was no opportunity to seek clarification, no opportunity to praise or explain, no opportunity to criticize or correct the bill. There was simply no process in the committee.

Now, we wonder, how did that happen? Well, during the markup of the bill while one of my amendments was pending and numerous other Democratic amendments were at the desk to be considered, the majority abruptly decided that they would call a 5-minute recess in the proceeding, and they went into the back room. As soon as we got through deliberating the one amendment that was being considered, then they moved the previous question on the amendment, on the bill, and all other amendments got cut off.

Mr. Speaker, the amendment that I was debating when they abruptly called this recess was the only amendment that was actually offered and considered throughout the process. One other amendment had been offered and withdrawn earlier, and debate was cut off.

I raise the question, if we have had no subcommittee process and we have had no full committee process, and if only five out of 12 amendments that people seek to offer on the floor will be considered, then when will this bill be considered? I raise the question, what are the supporters afraid of? Are they afraid to defend the bill? I am baffled by what this is all about.

Now, I said in committee that I was concerned that we were rushing through the markup to get the bill to the floor so that the bill could be reported out in advance of the National Rifle Association's convention. Now I am wondering whether we are rushing through the process on the floor. When is this bill going to be considered? I think that is a relevant question.

Now, the one amendment that I offered that was not made in order by the Committee on Rules would have had us have a debate about whether pending lawsuits, lawsuits that have already been filed by people who think that they were proceeding in good faith, maybe some of them were proceeding in good faith, but they were proceeding based on the law that existed at that time, those lawsuits would be wiped out by this bill.

I think that is unconstitutional. If it is not unconstitutional as an ex post facto law, then it is certainly unfair and it is obscene. We should not be going back saying to the courts of appeals, trial courts, to dismiss cases based on a statute that we are passing at this point.

Mr. Speaker, I think this bill needs to be considered, and I hope we will send it back to committee for that consideration.

Mr. Speaker, I would just encourage my colleagues to make their own judgment. If we add up all of the debate time about this bill, there will be about 3 hours. We are talking about undoing a system of law that has existed throughout our history, and we are doing it with 3 hours' worth of debate. Members should make the judgment about whether that is reasonable.

Additionally, we are talking about doing it without consideration of any of the amendments, other than the five that were made in order, that were offered by people in this body who have or who represent the same number of people that the gentleman on the opposite side represents. Those amendments were not considered in committee and they will not be considered on the floor.

So I do not know what this process is all about. We have made a mockery of the process in committee, and now we are about to do the same thing on the floor.

Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to control the time of the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Conyers) in opposition to the bill.

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

First of all, I think I want to clarify this debate because, starting at 7:30 this morning, eight o'clock this morning, I was on a television show debating about the bill I thought, and I heard all of the arguments related to how trial lawyers are irresponsible, how judges are irresponsible. I heard arguments about whether people ought to have guns or not have guns.

I submit to my colleagues that this debate is not about any of that. It is about a bill which I believe is an extreme bill, and I want to call my colleagues' attention to five points.

This is reform. I believe it is extreme reform. We are not talking about capping recoveries or putting a limit on recoveries from gun manufacturers, sellers, dealers, importers. We are talking about immunizing them from their liability for negligence. So this is extreme reform. It is not the kind of reform that we have been talking about in other contexts.

The second point I want to make is, this is unprecedented reform. The reform that this bill would provide is not available to any other manufacturer in America. It is not available to the automobile industry. It is not available to the pharmaceutical industry. It is not, despite what my chairman has said, about the tobacco industry. It is not available to the tobacco or the cigarette industry. There is no industry in America that has this kind of immunity. So it is unprecedented reform that is being sought here.

The third point I want to make is, this is not well-thought-out reform. There are major problems with this bill, and the committee made no effort to try to debate those problems, consider those problems, try to correct those problems.

There was no markup. If my colleagues heard the debate on the rule, there really was no markup. The total markup of this bill in committee took a total of 44 minutes, 44 minutes, and most of that was spent debating and arguing about whether the previous question ought to have been called. So these issues have not been considered. So we have got a bill that has not been well thought out because nobody has taken the time to worry about the specific provisions in the bill.

The fourth point I would make to my colleagues is that this is unconstitutional reform. We have a bill that says,

not only will it apply henceforth, now and forever, forward, but it will apply henceforth, now and forever, backwards. So if a person had a lawsuit and they are already in court, they already had their trial, their case is on appeal, this lawsuit would tell the appeals court to dismiss that lawsuit. If a person is in the middle of selecting a jury, if they have had motions and arguments about whether the conduct of the manufacturer or seller or dealer has been outrageous, this legislation would require that that lawsuit be dismissed. I think that retroactivity is unconstitutional, and if it is not unconstitutional, it is certainly unfair, unwise and unwarranted.

The fifth point I want to make about this legislation is that it is politically motivated reform. The reason this bill had not gotten any attention in the Committee on the Judiciary and that nobody wants to take the time to really debate about it on the floor is that we are rushing this bill through to the other side so that 2 weeks from now, when the National Rifle Association convenes its national convention in Florida, they will be energized, they will be motivated to do whatever they need to do to support many of the supporters of this bill. There is no reason that this bill has to be dealt with in the form that it is being dealt with.

So it is extreme. It is unprecedented. It is not well thought out, has not been debated. It is unconstitutional and if not unconstitutional, certainly unfair and unwise, and it is politically motivated.

Those five things should give us pause today, even aside from how this bill got here. We should be concerned that this institution is moving an irresponsible piece of legislation that is solely for the benefit of some right-wing agenda.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds, just long enough to respond to the gentleman that I am glad he demonstrated the court process is working. Most of the cases he talked about have been dismissed if they did not have merit, and that is exactly what should happen to them. And to distinguish for him between all of those cases, I know he would like to put this bill in the category of volunteer protections and Good Samaritans, but I do not think he is going to succeed on that front.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3\1/4\ minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 4\1/4\ minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. McCarthy).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott).

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pascrell).

Mr. Chairman I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel).

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Langevin).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer).

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

Mr. Chairman, I thank all Members who have participated in the debate. I would just reemphasize the five points that I made at the outset of this debate.

This legislation is extreme. It is unprecedented because it will give gun manufacturers, sellers and dealers immunity that no other industry has in America. It is not well thought out, because it has not gone through the process in a proper way and had amendments put on it. It is unconstitutional. Finally, it is politically motivated.

Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to vote against this legislation.

Mr. Chairman, I offer Amendment No. 1.

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

Mr. Chairman, the bill, because it has not been properly considered through the committee process, leaves a lot to be desired in terms of drafting. This amendment is an effort to correct a real problem with the bill, because the bill purports to give an exception for suits where there are physical injuries or property damage resulting directly from a defect in design or manufacture of the product when the product is used as intended.

The problem is that there is no definition of ``when the product is used as intended,'' so you are left with this situation.

I am sure my colleagues are going to tell you all kinds of things where lawsuits could go forward under this rubric, but I think a number of lawsuits are going to be foreclosed by this language, and I would like to just give one or two examples.

First of all, I am holding in my hand 13 recall notices from manufacturers of weapons. These recall notices recall a product, a gun, a kind of gun, in a lot of cases because when it is accidentally dropped, the gun will discharge.

Well, the question then becomes, if a gun is accidentally dropped, is it being used as intended? Is that gun being used as intended if a person accidentally drops the gun and it discharges?

Mr. Chairman, you have heard the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Langevin) say that was the exact situation which left him paralyzed here, and we should leave no doubt that in those circumstances that there should be liability.

Under this bill, this would apply even if the manufacturer had sent out a recall notice and the person had not acted on that recall notice. In fact, some of those recall notices say, do not do anything immediately on this, we are going to get to you 6 months down the road, and you can bring the gun

back to the dealer, and we will correct whatever problem there is with the gun.

So even if it is during that time period, there could be no potential liability here under this bill.

I think this language is irresponsible; and I am sure my colleagues are going to say, well, we did not intend that. But that is what the bill says, I am reading from the language, and if we had considered this bill in the regular process in the committee, perhaps we could have done a better job. But they were so intent on getting this bill out of committee to the floor and at the National Rifle Association's convention 2 weeks down the road that they did not care about the language.

Mr. Chairman, we should correct this, and this amendment allows us to do that.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Engel).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee).

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

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

Mr. Chairman, I think, regarding the people who have made statements in support of and against this amendment, I think the problem is that we have left a substantial ambiguity in the law because we have not taken the time to deal with this in the committee, where it should have been dealt with.

With all respect to the chairman of my subcommittee, the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Cannon), whom I respect and admire greatly, the fact that somebody shows up at a hearing and says that this language, ``used as intended,'' means one thing or another really is not going to be what controls that. The same judges that they have said are irresponsible are going to be making that determination.

Mr. Chairman, when we write a piece of legislation, it is our responsibility to write it in a way that leaves them no discretion about what we mean. I would submit that a child who picks up a gun and drops it, and it discharges, most of us would stand here and say that that gun was not being used as intended. Therefore, the parents of that child would have no recourse; nobody would have any recourse against the manufacturer.

I would submit that anybody who drops a gun and it accidentally discharges, as it did in the case of the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Langevin), could reasonably argue that that was not, or that that falls within the exception.

It is our responsibility to close these loopholes, not open additional ones. I ask my colleagues to support the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I just want to join in support of this amendment offered by the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott). Again, this is a case where, had we taken the time in committee to evaluate the language and allow the amendment of the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott), which was at the desk when the question was called on the bill in committee, if we had had this debate, we could probably have corrected this language to say what the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Feeney) would like for it to say.

Unfortunately, the bill says what it says. As much as he would like for it to say something different than what it says, it does not. It says that in order to pursue a cause of action, we have to have had a conviction.

That is ridiculous. The bill should not say that. Now, maybe the drafters did not intend for it to say that, which is exactly the point that I have been making throughout this process: If we had taken the time to evaluate the provisions of this bill, then we could have at least gotten the bill to say what they intend for it to say.

However, no judge is going to have the luxury of saying, well, they intended to say this, and therefore I am going to interpret this statute in that way. The judge has to look at the law as we have written it. Right now, this bill does not say what my colleagues would like for it to say because we have not taken the time to make it say that.

Mr. Chairman, we are being irresponsible and we are passing legislation through this House that we know has a serious flaw, and they are looking at us saying, well, you cannot read. I learned to read a long time ago. I can read what the language of this bill says, and it says exactly what the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott) says it says. Nothing that my colleagues on the other side can say can change that.

We need to amend the bill so that it says what they want it to say.

Mr. Chairman, I rise to ask my colleague from Virginia a question.

Suppose there is a conviction in a case and then a civil lawsuit is filed which would be allowed, and then the conviction is reversed on appeal. What would happen under this bill under those circumstances?

I yield to the gentleman from Virginia.

Mr. Chairman, I demand that the words of the gentlewoman from Wyoming (Mrs. Cubin) be taken down.

Mr. Chairman, I do not need the gentlewoman to apologize for my sensibilities. She needs to be apologizing for using words that are insulting to the entire African American race. And if that is what she is doing, then I gracefully accept her apology. But if she is saying that this is somehow because I am sensitive to those words, then I will not.

That is not what she said, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, I do insist, yes.

Mr. Speaker, I appeal the ruling of the Chair.

Motion to Table Offered by Mr. Sensenbrenner

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I offer amendment No. 5.

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

Mr. Chairman, I would say to my colleagues that the effect of this amendment would be to limit the application of this bill to manufacturers only.

As I said during the brief debate that we had in the committee, the Committee on the Judiciary, on this bill, there are, in fact, some manufacturers who are attempting to address concerns that the public has about gun safety. Some of them are trying to develop safety locks. Some are trying to develop computerized techniques for ownership identification.

If there is a rationale for this bill, which I do not believe there is, the rationale would be to reward those manufacturers who are acting responsibly. Unfortunately, the effect of this bill will be to reward them and incentivize them to act irresponsibly. I think that is a very, very unfortunate consequence of this bill.

On the other hand, most of the outrageous stories that we hear about irresponsibility are not necessarily about the manufacturers of guns; they are about dealers and sellers who refuse to acknowledge anything other than their own profit motives. They want, when someone walks into their store, when somebody walks into their pawnshop, when somebody approaches them with some money, they want that money and they do not care what happens after that. We have heard example after example after example of that kind of irresponsibility on the part of dealers.

Now, it is unfortunate that this bill covers not only manufacturers, it covers dealers, sellers, importers, the whole range of providers that put these guns into the stream of commerce. If there is any rationale for the bill, it is for the manufacturers.

I do not think we ought to be excusing irresponsible dealers, such as the dealer who ignored the frequent disappearance of guns from his inventory. One of hundreds of missing guns, which were never reported missing despite having been prominently displayed in the store, ends up being used in the sniper attacks in Washington. This bill would immunize that dealer from liability. That is irresponsible.

Mr. Chairman, let us have a debate about those manufacturers who are being responsible. I applaud their activities. Perhaps we could make a reasonable argument that they should be immunized from liability because they are making a product that is legal. I have heard that argument. I do not subscribe to it, but at least it has some credibility to it. But when we start immunizing everybody in the stream of commerce regardless of how responsible or irresponsible they are, that is where I draw the line.

Mr. Chairman, I would encourage a ``yes'' vote on my amendment, which limits the impact of this bill to manufacturers only.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Rush).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Mrs. Jones).

Mr. Chairman, I am prepared to close if the gentleman does not have other speakers.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the remainder of my time.

Mr. Chairman, let me say that if we want to protect dealers simply because they comply with the letter of the law, even though they know that they are making irresponsible decisions such as in the case of the officer, Officer Lemongello, who was shot by a gun that was sold by a dealer, they did follow all of the black letter of the law; but at the same time they knew that they were selling the guns not to the person who bought them, to the female person who bought the guns, but to the male person who was in there selecting the guns and identifying them. And they were so concerned that as soon as they walked out of the store they called ATF and said we have done something irresponsible, even though they had complied with the law.

Now, all we are trying to do is make dealers and everybody throughout the process be responsible. And if we want to immunize that kind of conduct, then, I mean, I guess you are going to vote for this bill. Because that is what it does. But I am telling you we are being irresponsible when we do that. And if we really want to reward people who are trying to deal with gun violence, then we cannot keep rewarding dealers who act irresponsibly knowing that they act irresponsibly, importers, sellers. Perhaps there is a rationale for protecting manufacturers who have demonstrated a willingness to try to act responsibly. Some of them are trying to do the trigger lock thing, trying to do computerized identification. I think this bill is going to set them back because basically once we pass this bill, they do not have any incentive to even continue to do that.

But if there is anybody who has a rationale, it perhaps is the manufacturers; and that is what this amendment would do, limit the effects of the bill to the manufacturers. I encourage my colleagues to support the amendment.

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

Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion to recommit.

Mr. Speaker, I am, indeed.

Mr. Speaker, the section that the motion to recommit would strike is section 3(b) of the bill, which reads as follows: ``A qualified civil liability action that is pending on the date of the enactment of this act shall be dismissed immediately by the court in which the action was brought or is currently pending.''

The effect of that language is to make this bill not only applicable to what happens from today forward or from the passage and enactment of the bill forward, but to make it have retrospective impact.

We estimate that there are upwards of 300 pending lawsuits in various stages throughout the country. Those lawsuits were filed by plaintiffs thinking that the state of the law was as it existed prior to this bill being enacted, if in fact it is. So the effect of the bill would be to an ex post facto law, which we think would make the bill unconstitutional; but even if it did not make it unconstitutional, would certainly make it unfair to people who have filed their lawsuits in court and, in some cases, have proceeded with trial.

Some of those cases are on appeal. This bill would require their dismissal, whether they are in discovery, whether they had just filed a complaint, whether they had gone through the trial process, or whether they are pending in the Court of Appeals. They may be pending in the United States Supreme Court. This bill would say those cases would have to be dismissed.

Mr. Speaker, I would submit that neither the committee, the Committee on the Judiciary, nor this House has done any evaluation of those pending lawsuits.

There have been no hearings about what they entail. We do know that one of them that would be involved involves a police officer by the name of Lemongello who testified at the hearing that we had on this bill, and his lawsuit would be one of those that would be dismissed.

The facts of his case indicate that he was the victim of a gun shot by an individual, who a dealer sold the gun to a female companion of that individual, knowing full well that the gun was not to be used by that female companion. And as soon as they got out the door with the gun, they were so suspicious of what was going on, they had immediately called the ATF about that.

We think that the sniper case that is pending would be in jeopardy of being dismissed by this lawsuit by this bill if this amendment or motion to recommit is not adopted. And even my colleagues last year when this bill was being advanced through the House, upon recognizing what was going on in our community with the sniper incidents, said we are not going to consider this bill at this time. But here we are a year later saying that we are going to pass a bill that could eliminate potential civil liability on the part of the dealer, who should have known that the gun that was out there which they were not keeping accurate track of in their inventory, should have known that that gun was being distributed and sold, and that case would probably be dismissed.

There are a number of other instances where cases would be dismissed if this bill goes forward in its current form. It is unseemly that this House would pass a bill that would have retroactive effect. It is one thing to say, okay, today, starting today we are putting you on notice that this is the law from this point forward. It is entirely another thing to say to people who have filed their lawsuits that the law is one thing that we are going to change and make this bill retroactive to you. I ask for my colleagues to support the motion to recommit.

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