Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, last year President Bush put Social Security reform on the national agenda. His proposal to save Social Security by giving younger Americans the choice to choose personal savings accounts has been met, to date, by ridicule and silence by the loyal opposition in this Congress. The ridicule has taken a variety of forms, denouncing the President's motives and intentions. The intentions of Republicans have been described by some outside organizations as an effort to tear down the house of public retirement in America.

Beyond that slur, there has just been, to date, simply silence. No ideas, no counterproposals, nothing to deal with what many refer to as a generational tsunami heading for Social Security, as some 40 million Americans over the age of 65 within 20 years will become 80 million Americans over the age of 65.

I say silence with hesitation, Mr. Speaker, because that actually ended yesterday among the loyal opposition when the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Wexler) introduced his legislation at a press event in his home State, where he unveiled a bill which he described as Social Security forever, saying, admirably, ``I believe it is time for Democrats to offer an alternative to the President.''

And to the gentleman from Florida, I say with admiration, I could not agree more. I admire him for his leadership on behalf of his vision of government and also his honesty as he proposes to cure what ails Social Security in the next 50 to 75 years with that anecdote that Democrats run to most often, and that is, namely, higher taxes. The Wexler bill, with a 6 percent tax increase on income over $90,000 a year would be the largest marginal tax rate increase in a generation.

Let us be clear about this, Mr. Speaker. House conservatives will vigorously oppose any effort to finance Social Security reform by raising taxes on working families, small businesses, and family farms. Thanks to the Wexler proposal, the American people now see a very clear choice before them, the President and the Republican Congress's vision for reform and the single Democrat vision that has been articulated, higher taxes. With one of the largest marginal tax increases in a generation, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Wexler's) Social Security forever bill looks more like higher taxes forever.

It is time for this Congress to move on to the substance of Social Security reform. Let us offer our conflicting visions in this chamber across the aisle and move forward to save and secure and reform Social Security for our children and our grandchildren.

Mr. Speaker, yesterday at noon was so much like September 11. Mr. Speaker, I was standing on the House floor with our majority leader as I saw Members beginning to hurry out of this Chamber.

As I exited the House, an F-16 literally flashed across the sky as thousands yesterday, as that day in 2001, streamed from the Capitol into the sunlight of uncertain moments and an undefined threat.

So much was the same, but so much has really changed. On September the 11 evacuation was largely disorganized and spontaneous. But yesterday, thanks to the extraordinary leadership of the United States Capitol Police; Bill Livingood, the House Sergeant at Arms; and Police Chief Terence Gainer, 25,000 public officials and personnel were evacuated from the Capitol and buildings around Capitol Hill in less than 6 minutes in an intense, but orderly, manner.

It is an extraordinary comfort, I know, to millions of Americans who know that whatever the day may bring in our Nation's capital, thanks to the leadership and the security officials here on Capitol Hill, and the Department of Homeland Security, our national government is ready.

Mr. Speaker, with the specter of fiscal collapse facing our children and grandchildren's public retirement, Social Security reform is an idea whose time has come. And President Bush, never one to flinch from a good fight, is to be commended for taking it on.

Social Security reform means keeping its promise in tact for seniors and all who choose to remain in the system. But Social Security reform also means offering a better deal to younger Americans in the form of voluntary personal accounts.

And we can do it all, Mr. Speaker, without raising taxes on working families, small businesses and family farms. So let us get on with it. Let the House lead on Social Security reform. If the House goes first, we will produce a reform that is consistent with the President's vision for a 21st century public retirement system.

Mr. Speaker, as we were reminded with a thudding explosion on the streets of New York City at 3 a.m. this morning, we are a Nation at war. And so it is with particular pleasure that I rise to extol the arrest of Abu Farraj al-Libbi by Pakistani authorities yesterday in Pakistan. The capture of the third-ranking operative in al Qaeda is a momentous and significant event in the war on terror.

The President said, ``His arrest removes a dangerous enemy who was a direct threat to America and a critical victory in the war on terror.''

Stephen Hadley, the national security adviser, said he was not only doing operations, but was also into finance and administration; and he calls it a ``real accomplishment.''

As I learned when I visited Pakistan last December, and let us be clear on this point, while Pakistani authorities are to be commended for the third-ranking member of al Qaeda, let us make sure that we know as Americans it was a cooperation with American forces and American intelligence personnel on the ground in Pakistan that made that possible. A joint effort with Pakistan is winning the war on terror.

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

I rise in strong support of the emergency war supplemental, and I commend in particular the new chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, the gentleman from California (Mr. Lewis), and all the members of his committee, for masterful and disciplined work on this important legislation.

Mr. Speaker, last year I traveled to Iraq and Afghanistan to meet with troops and local leaders. I witnessed firsthand the challenges and opportunities they face, and I can tell my colleagues with conviction that heroes and a future of freedom are being forged every day in Iraq and Afghanistan. And while much work remains, I am more confident than ever in the justice and the ultimate success of our cause.

And, Mr. Speaker, I remain confident that we here in Congress must do our duty, demonstrating the idealism and the perseverance of the American people, stand with the men and women serving in our Armed Forces, and speed the passage of this emergency supplemental bill without rancor or without delay.

The men and women who liberated Iraq and Afghanistan deserve our very best. They deserve the resources they need to get the job done and come home safe.

It was just this morning I received an e-mail from Dawn Heister, the courageous widow of Master Sergeant Mike Heister, who fell in Afghanistan along with four other Hoosiers just the day before Easter. The courage in her e-mail inspired and moved my wife and I to such an extent that I rise today and dedicate my humble efforts and my vote today in favor of this emergency war supplemental in the memory of Master Sergeant Mike Heister and his brave wife.

But just like our troops, the American people deserve the very best protection, and the gentleman from California (Chairman Lewis) and the members of his committee, have succeeded in adding $635 million in budgetary resources for increased border security and enforcement, and this also is a critical advance in the war on terror. The money, just like what we will invest in Iraq and Afghanistan, will help hire, train, and equip and support an additional complement of over 500 Border Patrol agents and relieve current facility overcrowding.

We also will provide resources for training. It will provide the Department of Homeland Security with additional resources to train and hire criminal investigators and immigration enforcement agents, recognizing that the 9/11 Commission concluded that for the terrorists, travel documents are every bit as powerful and important as weapons. This legislation will require all States to prove lawful presence in the United States if their driver's licenses are to be accepted as a form of identification as a travel document to a Federal official, including Federal officials working at airports for the Transportation Security Administration.

So I say, we are doing our part to provide for the common defense. We are standing with our soldiers abroad as they fight on the front lines of the war on terror. But this legislation also importantly and urgently speeds additional resources to the fight here at home, with its increased complement of support for border security and travel security.

I applaud, again, the gentleman from California (Chairman Lewis) and the House Committee on Appropriations for their disciplined and principled manner of approaching this legislation. I urge my colleagues to affirm their leadership with a yea vote, and I urge the passage of the emergency war supplemental.

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

I thank the gentleman from Iowa for his stalwart and courageous and unbending commitment to an independent judiciary and for calling this forum tonight, which is really about this body speaking of the obligations of the Congress as a whole to do what the American people sent us here to do, and that is, in very simple terms, Mr. Speaker, we vote for a living. And I am going to be in Muncie, Indiana on Friday. We make a lot of car parts there. We have got a lot of corn and soybean fields in Eastern Indiana, where they grow things for a living, they make things for a living. We actually just vote for a living here. Any other way one dresses it up, there are a lot of other aspects of our job, but when the bells go off, legislators in the House and the Senate vote. That is what taxpayers call us to do. This is not a debating society, and the effort by our colleagues with the constitutional option as it is rightly observed in the Congress is an effort to reestablish a 214-year tradition in the Senate of either approving or disapproving the President's nominations by a simple majority vote. As many of my constituents love to say, this is not really rocket science.

I think for many Americans, the central question of the moment is can Mr. Smith still go to Washington? I mean, we could get lost in Article I, section 5 of the Constitution, and determining the rules and proceedings and all of the gobbledegook, but in my heart, I think many Americans just ask the question, can Jimmy Stewart still go to the floor of the United States Senate and expose the corrupt dam project?

I really believe it comes down to that. With a lot of the hyperbole and the hyper-rhetoric about the ending of filibusters and the ending of democracy and great traditions in the Senate, I have got to think, Mr. Speaker, that many Americans looking in are still asking that question, can Mr. Smith still go to Washington? And I think it is absolutely imperative that we say tonight an emphatic yes, Mr. Smith can still go to Washington, that specifically all the duly-elected majority of the United States Senate seeks to do is to eliminate filibusters on judicial nominations, which, I will argue is unprecedented in the Senate to begin with. It has never been accepted.

And recently, in the last 5 years, by prominent members of the Democratic then majority of the Senate, people like Senator Teddy Kennedy, people like Senator Patrick Leahy, people like Senator Tom Daschle, decried the use of the filibuster on judicial nominations. The filibuster that Jimmy Stewart used in the famous movie ``Mr.

Smith Goes to Washington'' was the legislative filibuster, the ability to go to the floor and to use the rules of the Senate to tie the institution up, to use a minority power in the institution to expose truth. And the reality is that that remains untouched and ever should it remain untouched, in this legislator's judgment. It is an essential element of the power of the most deliberative body in the world.

But that being said, Mr. Speaker, the introduction in recent years of filibusters on judicial nominations of the President of the United States is unprecedented, and it is precisely that which the majority of the United States Senate seeks to bring to an end.

And let me just give a couple of quotes. There are those who say that filibusters on judicial nominations are a great part of the Senate tradition and that, indeed, by their own rhetoric, Democrats acknowledge this not to be the case. Senator Patrick Leahy, and I will quote from the Congressional Record 18 June 1998, who said, ``I would object and fight against any filibuster on a judge, whether it is somebody I opposed or supported; that I felt the Senate should do its duty.'' Senator Patrick Leahy.

Senator Teddy Kennedy in 1998, also in the Congressional Record in March, said, ``We owe it to Americans across the country to give these nominees a vote. If our Republican colleagues do not like them, vote against them. But give them a vote.''

And Senator Tom Daschle, then I believe the majority leader of the U.S. Senate, of Clinton nominees to the United States Senate, said, ``The Constitution is straightforward about the few instances in which more than a majority of Congress must vote,'' and he names them: ``A veto override, a treaty, a finding of guilt in an impeachment proceeding.'' But he said, ``Every other action of Congress is taken by majority vote.'' And he went on to say, this is Tom Daschle now: ``The Founders debated the idea of requiring more than a majority . . . They concluded that putting such immense powers in the hands of the minority ran against the democratic principle. Democracy means majority rule, not majority gridlock.''

Tom Daschle, Senator Patrick Leahy, Senator Ted Kennedy all acknowledging the fact during the Clinton administration, that filibusters have never been a part nor should they ever be a part of the deliberation of the Senate over presidential judicial nominees.

I say as I close, and as I began, Congress is not a debating society. We vote for a living. And what we call on our colleagues to do, as much as our rules permit us, and I believe the American people that returned a widening Republican majority in the United States Senate in the last election and returned this President to office by the largest margin in American history insist that the Senate do its duty, that the Senate vote up or down, to quote Senator Ted Kennedy, up or down on the President's nominees to the bench.

Mr. Speaker, President Bush sent to Capitol Hill earlier this year a strong conservative budget that represented a good start down the road toward fiscal discipline. And the House Budget Committee, under the skillful leadership of the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle), began a process not so much of writing a Federal budget, as of truly changing the way we spend the people's money.

Now, I would agree with my colleague who spoke just before me, that we can do better and we will do better. But this budget that we will adopt today is a good start. And most especially, from our perspective, it is important that we pass this budget because it includes not only new restraints, actual cuts in nondefense spending, actual savings in entitlements, but it gives Members of Congress the power to put our fiscal house in order by bringing with it today the new protection known as ``point-of-order protection,'' that any Member of Congress can now go to the floor for major spending bills and raise a procedural point to enforce the budget that we are adopting today.

This budget is a good start, however modest, down the road toward fiscal discipline. And with the power to enforce it we are changing the way we spend the people's money.

Mr. Speaker, I very pleased to announce that Metaldyne Corporation is holding an official ribbon cutting ceremony at their New Castle, Indiana, facility on May 21, 2005. This will be a wonderful celebration for the company, its employees and their families, and the entire New Castle community.

Metaldyne is vital to New Castle, and the state of Indiana. It is the largest employer in Henry County, with over 1,000 employees producing more than 28 million chassis components, modules and assemblies each year.

Mr. Speaker, I deeply regret that I cannot attend the gathering, but I do look forward to working with Metaldyne to create jobs and strengthen the economy in East-Central Indiana. I congratulate Metaldyne New Castle, and wish them the best in the coming years.

Madam Speaker, the summer of 527s will long be remembered in American politics. Groups organized on the left and the right under section 527 of the Internal Revenue Code spent more than $300 million to support candidates, while the two major political parties and the Nation's most respected labor units, associations, businesses, and constitutional groups watched in silence from the sidelines.

In response to the summer of 527s, some here in Washington, DC want to exert more regulation and control. But my colleague, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Wynn), a Democrat, and I have taken a different approach by introducing the bipartisan 527 Fairness Act. The Pence-Wynn bill restores basic fairness to the political parties and outside organizations instead of attempting further regulation.

Madam Speaker, when it comes to political speech, greater government control is never the answer. More freedom is.

Now, The Washington Post calls the Pence-Wynn bill ``a dangerous notion'' that is ``misguided.'' And freedom is chaotic, but as Thomas Jefferson said, ``I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.''

I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to consider Pence- Wynn and support us as we answer the summer of 527s with more freedom, not less.

Mr. Speaker, my late father used to say, you only have to do two things in life: die and pay taxes. Just about 40 minutes ago, I did one of those things, and I will let my colleagues guess which one it was.

Like millions of Americans, before midnight tomorrow night, I managed to fill out all of the forms which, for me, as a man of no significant means, a public servant married to a schoolteacher, there were only forms that I had to file in three States and with one national government. The full total of the pages that I had to fill out and file neared to 100.

Mr. Speaker, the People's House is supposed to resonate with the hearts of the American people. As we approach this tax day and go through our usual spring ritual of arguments in Washington, D.C., I hope the Congress will resonate with the heart of the American people and seize upon the opportunity to simplify this tax system and end the tyranny of anxiety that reigns throughout the land every April 15.

Madam Speaker, it is April 13; and to my fellow American procrastinators I say, 2 days and counting, until tax day, April 15.

In 2003 alone, Americans spent $203 billion just preparing our taxes, let alone paying for them. Madam Speaker, 1 billion hours in annual paperwork has been added to tax preparation in just the last 10 years.

Think of these comparisons: in 2003, your 1040 form is 73 lines long. In 1935 it was 34 lines long. In 2003, your 1040 booklet was 131 pages. When it was created in 1935, it was 2 pages.

Are we having fun yet? I say no.

Today we will scrap the death tax, and well we should. But while we are at it, let this majority rededicate itself to scrap the code, to create a new flatter and fairer and simpler system that ends the tyranny of April 15 on the American people, a tyranny of anxiety.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time, and I rise in strong support of the rule and the Death Tax Repeal Permanency Act of 2005. I do so, Mr. Speaker, really to just speak about small business America and about a small businessman who raised me.

It was 17 years ago today at the too-young age of 58 that my father, Ed Pence, passed away. It happens to be an unfortunate anniversary in my family, but on April 13, 1988, we said goodbye to my father. He was a small business owner that many on the floor of the Congress today would classify as a rich American.

Now, the rich American that I saw was a man who started out in a very small business in Columbus, Indiana, and worked tirelessly to raise his four sons and two daughters and build a business that employed several hundred local people in support of their families. It is really, with the memory of my father in mind, that I rise in vigorous support of the permanent repeal of the death tax. Because while my family was reeling from the grief of the loss of my father to a sudden heart attack 17 years ago today, also we were settling into the reality that much of what he had built, all of which he had already paid taxes on, was now subject to as much as a 47 percent estate tax.

My father's death and the business that he built and the resources that he had husbanded, after paying all of his debts and all of his taxes, should not have been subject to another tax. And we come into this well today on behalf of small business owners and family farmers just like my dad to put to an end permanently this truly immoral death tax in America.

It is the reality out there, not the heated rhetoric of rich versus poor, that explains why 89 percent of small business owners favor permanent repeal. In fact, they know that more than 70 percent of family businesses do not survive to a second generation; 87 percent do not make it to a third generation. Much is made of middle America that I am proud to represent and

the fact that Main Streets and courthouse squares are largely boarded up. People want to blame the Internet. They want to blame mass retailers. Well, I put the majority of the blame in practical terms at the doorstep of the death tax. It has waged war on small business and family farmers all across America, and we will begin to reverse that in a permanent way today.

So in the tender memory of my father, of his earnest labors, and with it in my mind the men and women who to this day labor to raise their families and build small businesses and family farms all across America that I extol the authors of this bill. I endorse the rule, and I vigorously support the permanent repeal of the death tax.

Madam Speaker, the summer of 2004 will be remembered for many years in American politics.

Groups organized on the left and the right under what was known as section 527 of the Internal Revenue Code and spent more than $300 million to support candidates, while the two major political parties and the Nation's most respected labor unions, associations, businesses, and constitutional groups watched in silence from the sidelines.

In response to this summer of 527s, some in Washington will bring measures to rein in the 527 groups with greater government control and regulation, and that is certainly their right.

The gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Wynn), a Democratic Congressman,

and I have taken a different approach in introducing the 527 Fairness Act in the 109th Congress.

The 527 Fairness Act seeks to restore basic fairness to the political process for political parties and 501(c) organizations instead of attempting further regulation on political speech. More freedom is always the answer of the difficulties and challenges and the politics of a free society.

While this liberty may be a bit more chaotic and inconvenient for some in the political class, as Thomas Jefferson said, ``I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.''

I join the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Wynn), my colleague, in urging cosponsorship and swift passage of the 527 Fairness Act.

Mr. Speaker, as a member of the House Committee on International Relations, I rise to express a word of humble welcome to one of freedom's men in the former Soviet Union, President Viktor Yushchenko of Ukraine, who addressed a joint session of Congress just moments ago.

Like the democracy's Orange Revolution that he personifies, President Yushchenko is the man who would not die. He survived the toxic machinations of those who see freedom as a threat. And those wicked men were right: freedom in the Ukraine and their brave President are a threat to every form of tyranny against the minds of men and women in that ancient land.

It is all together fitting that the capital of democracy on planet Earth welcomed one of its first 21st century heroes to these hallowed halls.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support, along with the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hyde), on behalf of this resolution honoring the life and achievement of His Holiness, Pope John Paul II, and expressing profound sorrow upon his death.

Mr. Speaker, while I am a United States Representative today, my first public position ever was that of an altar boy at St. Columbus Catholic Church in Columbus, Indiana, so it is with a particular sense of privilege that I rise today in this capacity to recognize the extraordinary life and work of Pope John Paul II.

My Catholic faith and that of my entire family continues to remain the bulwark of our world view, and much of that over the past three decades has been invigorated by the leadership and eloquence and courage of this man.

Now, many in the national media have commented since the Pope's passing this last Saturday about the nature of his appeal and the source of the international grief that has attended his passing. Many commentators in print and on television have suggested that his appeal is a direct result of his well-schooled public abilities, loosely defined as his charisma.

But I rise today in support of this resolution to respectfully disagree with those commentators and to say that I believe Pope John Paul II's appeal on a global scale is grounded in his role as a moral leader; in fact, one of the chief moral leaders on the planet of the 20th century.

His moral leadership and his personal courage were forged, as we have heard even today, from an extraordinary youth in the grip of Nazi Germany's tyranny. Pope John Paul II, from very early in his life, became an opponent of every form of government organized to present tyranny against the mind of man. His stands against communism throughout his life literally were the underpinning that brought down that wall we heard President Yushchenko speak of with gratitude today.

He was also a moral leader not only for his own Christian church, but for the wider world. And as the gentleman from California (Mr. Lantos) just shared eloquently, after centuries of silent enmity between Christendom and the ancient people of Israel, Pope John Paul II spoke words of reconciliation and healing.

In particular, his visit and prayers at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem was, I believe, a watershed event in the history of the Christian church and will resonate for centuries in the work of the Catholic Church and Christians across the globe.

Pope John Paul II stood against the immorality of communism and anti- Semitism and ensured that the church would remain a bulwark of moral truth. And he stood for the sanctity of life, as the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hyde) stated so eloquently. When the culture of death has made such a steady advance across Western civilization, Pope John Paul II stood for the unborn. His leadership, his voice, his compassion will be missed in the life of his church and, I argue humbly, the wider world. Pope John Paul II's death is a loss for humanity. He was not just the leader of the largest Christian church in the world, he was truly a moral leader.

May God rest his soul and bring comfort and consolation to millions of his adherents.