Floor Statements

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

Mr. Speaker, I come to this floor in the reality of representing a district, 10 counties of which are, at this hour, recognized as Federal disaster areas. The flood of 2003 saw the waters of the Wabash River and the St. Mary's River rise and devastate families and homes in much of the eastern Indiana district that I represent.

But there is another rising tide that I am here to support the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Toomey) on as he seeks this amendment's passage, and that is the rising tide of red ink that is engulfing the American taxpayer, and a modest effort today that we attempt to stem.

The Federal deficit today stands at $455 billion, and I would offer humbly, with deep respect for the gentleman from Florida and his outstanding leadership of this Committee on Appropriations, that now is not the time to add another $1 billion, another new massive player to that deficit.

Two important points, I think, in this discussion. We have heard from the Committee on the Budget chairman, and I would not enter that debate

between chairmen, as unwise as that might be, but it is accurate to say that the dollars that are being asked for today are not in the budget resolution that we passed narrowly on this floor.

Number two, in defense of the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations and the House Members gathered here on both sides of the aisle, the money that we are considering today was in the House bill. We did our work, it seems to me important to say today; the House Committee on Appropriations met the President's request for FEMA, and somewhere in the midst of the conference committee, it was lost.

As people across the 10 counties of my eastern Indiana district struggle against the weight of the flood of 2003, I think we ought to try and do two things at once today: pass the Toomey amendment; speed much-needed relief by the end of this day to make sure FEMA has the resources it needs, but speed relief to the American taxpayer who earnestly desires that we confront the rising tide of red ink in Washington.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the reimportation bill, but I do so with the deepest respect and affection for the author of this bill whose character and tenacity I admire greatly.

America, without a doubt, has the greatest health care system in the history of the world. Some have spoken of riding buses to Canada to purchase prescription drugs. Well, they have, and I am sure they could wave at the many tens of thousands of Canadians that come on buses across our border to receive the elective treatment that takes 9 to 18 months in some cases in their system.

It has been asked today by my colleague from Michigan, why do drugs cost 40 percent more in Canada. Well, the answer is very simple. Because Canada, like Germany, like France, are socialist countries. I am sure pharmaceutical drugs would have been cheaper in the Soviet Union.

The truth is, reimportation of drugs is simply reimportation of price controls and socialism. Let us not import Canadian price controls and socialism. Let us export the free market health care principles that make our system the envy of the world.

Mr. Speaker, the Bible asks the question, ``From where does my help come from?'' And sometimes help comes from unexpected places, like an anonymous civilian in Mosul who brought the sadistic sons of a dictator to justice yesterday; and like the words of a former President supporting the Bush administration's assertion that Saddam Hussein likely had weapons of mass destruction.

It was last night on CNN, former President Bill Clinton said, ``When I left office, there was a substantial amount of biological and chemical material unaccounted for. That is, at the end of the first Gulf War we knew what he had. We knew what was destroyed in all the inspection processes. We bombed for 4 days in 1998, may have gotten it all, may have gotten half of it, may have gotten none of it, but we didn't know.''

``So,'' President Clinton said, ``I thought it was prudent for the President to go to the U.N.''

And he went on to say, ``If you don't cooperate, the penalty could be regime change, not just continued sanctions.'' So said former President Bill Clinton.

Thank you, President Clinton, for confirming what President Bush told America: Saddam Hussein had biological and chemical weapons and confronting him was prudent.

Mr. Speaker, there is a lot of debate going on here in Washington, D.C. over our reasons for going to war in Iraq. Yesterday, I had the privilege of meeting with some men I believe we should hear more from. They were Marines injured in Operation Iraqi Freedom currently being treated at Bethesda Naval Hospital, Marines like Mark Graunke, Jr., a staff sergeant who lost his left hand, three of his fingers and his left eye and took shrapnel in removing landmines in theater on July 8 earlier this month.

What Mark told me, Congressman, I am not a hero, I was just doing my job for the good old United States of America, and it was a privilege. Then I talked to another sergeant whose name I will omit, but a man who the Navy corpsman told me may not make it. He was flanked by his mom and his dad and the mother of his two children and he looked me in the eye, with tubes coming out, and he simply said, Congressman, the only thing I worry about is that we will pull out early and we will not finish the job and it will mean all of the sacrifices we made over there were for nothing.

Then there was Michael Jones who took an RPG shell in the leg, looked me in the eye and told me he was glad the man fired at him instead of the vehicle where five of his fellow Marines were doing a search. I said, Lance Corporal Jones, are you telling me you are glad you were shot with a rocket in the leg? He said, yes, sir, I am sure it saved lives.

These are all men that know one thing that the American people know, that freedom is worth fighting for, freedom is worth dying for. It was about the freedom of the Iraqi people and securing the safety and freedom of the American people that this President moved against a brutal tyrant in Saddam Hussein, who most assuredly coddled terrorists in his 30-year reign in Iraq, and admitted to the weapons of mass destruction and used weapons of mass destruction against his own countrymen and against his neighbors.

Mr. Speaker, these brave Marines currently being treated at Bethesda Naval Hospital taught me much, reminded me of much: that freedom is worth fighting for, freedom is worth dying for, and we will stay the course until we deliver freedom to the families and children and the legacy of Iraq.

Mr. Chairman, as my colleagues are aware, I had an amendment that would have been considered today that I am also offering today as freestanding legislation regarding the United Nations Reassessment Act of 2003, which would call for a conclusion of Congress, a sense of Congress, that the representative of the United States to the U.N. would seek an agreement to lower the assessment level of the United States for the regular budget of the United Nations when the U.N. Committee on Contributions considers the scale of assessments for member nations for the period 2004 through 2006.

Many Americans may not be aware, Mr. Chairman, that the United States' today's current percentage assessment to the United Nations' regular budget contribution spans fully 22 percent of the overall fund. Germany, another member of the Security Council, pays 9.8 percent; France, 6.5 percent; and China, just 1.5 percent of the regular budget contributions.

As we look at the extraordinary percentage that American taxpayers pay in the regular budget contributions of the U.N., I think it is important that we reflect on the history of recent events and that we think carefully about the months immediately preceding Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Some, even on the floor of this Chamber, Mr. Chairman, have said that during that period of time the President failed to lead America. They have said that diplomacy failed. But I, and I believe many millions of Americans, Mr. Chairman, believe that in fact the U.N. failed at that critical moment in history, not so much to take the will of the American people seriously, as to take itself seriously. There are 16 separate resolutions of the United Nations, over a period of a decade, challenging and cajoling and urging and attempting to enforce the unanimous decisions of the U.N. Security Council against the nation of Iraq; and again and again and again, the United Nations failed to take itself seriously.

And then, last fall, the Security Council, including Germany and France and Russia, unanimously adopted U.N. Resolution 1441, which required that Iraq immediately disclose the possession of all weapons of mass destruction and armaments in violation of previous resolutions; also, that Iraq would not only disclose those armaments, Mr. Chairman, but would submit to the destruction of those armaments, or it would face what were described as ``serious consequences.''

When history beckoned, Mr. Chairman, the U.N. failed. And as a result, the United States of America was required to lead a coalition of the willing to depose this tyrant, the mass graves which in Iraq speak volumes about the rightness of our cause.

President Kennedy, in referring to the United Nations as our last best hope in an age where the instruments of war have far outpaced the instruments of peace, challenged America in his first inaugural address to pledge our support to prevent the United Nations from ``becoming merely a forum for invective.''

As I pursue this legislation today, apart from my amendment, I want to assure my colleagues that it will be my aim not that we would abandon the United Nations, but that we would choose the opportunity on this day and future days to send a message by sending less American taxpayer dollars to

the United Nations; to send a message that we expect more of the United Nations; to truly make it a place that is the last best hope for mankind and not, as President Kennedy so prophetically stated, a forum for invective against our people and our intentions as we strive to confront tyranny in the world.

I thank the chairman for yielding and allowing me to comment on the United Nations Reassessment Act, and I look very much forward to working with the committee and my colleagues as we reconsider what the American taxpayers are being asked to provide to an institution that so woefully failed history in these recent days.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to have my name removed as a cosponsor of H.R. 1472.

Mr. Speaker, as Director George Tenet of the CIA comes to the Hill today, the debate will go on between whether U.S. intelligence agreed with the intelligence of our honored and treasured ally, Great Britain, over a particular transaction for enriched uranium in Africa. But there is no debate that Iraq had a nuclear weapons program that spanned nearly 3 decades.

Iraqi scientist Khidhir Hamza told U.S. officials after he fled Iraq in 1994 that he helped train a cadre of young scientists who would be capable of resuming Iraq's atomic weapons program as soon as the U.N. cut back inspections. He said the program was personally directed by Saddam since its inception 3 decades earlier and was aided and abetted by technology transferred from many Western nations.

And just 2 weeks ago, Mahdi Obeidi led U.S. authorities in Baghdad to dig up shrubbery in his backyard to find sophisticated parts and documents to support Saddam's nuclear weapons program.

While we debate agreements between intelligence agencies, let us remember that about which there is no debate: Saddam Hussein had a 30- year nuclear weapons program, and if he went forward unchecked, would have used it to blackmail and tyrannize the world.

Mr. Speaker, even here in Washington, D.C., the truth still matters. And despite what my colleague from Ohio just suggested, the truth is that Iraq had a program of weapons of mass destruction in the months and years prior to operation Iraqi Freedom. Saddam Hussein himself admitted in 1991 to the possession of 10,000 nerve gas warheads, 1,500 chemical weapons, and 412 tons of chemical weapons agents. The truth is President Clinton attacked Saddam Hussein in 1998 to confront his biological, chemical and nuclear weapons programs. The truth is that Great Britain's intelligence community confirmed Iraq's efforts to obtain enriched uranium in Africa. The truth is it was that intelligence report that the President spoke of on this floor, and the truth is that Iraq had a weapons of mass destruction program and that Operation Iraqi Freedom was our finest and noblest and most necessary hour in these recent times.

Madam Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time.

I want to be clear on this issue. I am pro-life and I do not apologize for it, but there is no choice in China.

There is no woman's right to choose in China. There is a policy of forced coercive abortion and family planning. Whether or not academics who first observed it were discredited entirely, there is a policy of forced abortion. And with regard to the UNFPA's role, Madam Chairman, I will quote none other than Secretary of State Colin Powell, July 21, 2002, saying, ``The UNFPA's support of and involvement in China's population planning activities allows the Chinese government to implement more effectively its program of coercive abortion; therefore, it is not permissible to continue funding of the UNFPA at this time.'' So said Secretary of State Colin Powell.

It is why we are here today, because there is an attempt to change the language first adopted in Kemp-Kasten in the 1985 Supplemental Appropriations Acts that barred funding to organizations that support or participate in the management of a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization. The language adopted in the Committee on International Relations essentially creates a safe harbor where, as long as the UNFPA claims ignorance of China's barbaric birth control policies, they can receive U.S. funds.

The reality is that UNFPA has a history of supporting China's coercive family planning program. Sven Burmeister of the UNFPA actually called China's population control policies ``a gift to mankind.''

It is barbarism at its worst. I stand, therefore, in strong support of the Smith-Oberstar-Hyde amendment. It is not time to back up on fundamental human rights protections.

Mr. Speaker, as a member of the Committee on International Relations and the Human Rights Caucus, I rise today to talk about China. I know we in Washington are not talking about China much these days other than China is a great example of economic opportunity for American enterprise, and so it is. But before the Congressional Human Rights Caucus last week, we gathered to hear luminaries like Harry Wu, Chinese dissident, founder of the Laogai Research Foundation, and an even more famous dissident, Way Ting Sheng, a man who has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize a half dozen different times, and is known as the Chinese Mandela. They sat in a small congressional hearing room last week and spoke about an astonishing reality in China that I rise to reflect on today. It involves the execution of prisoners on an extraordinary and widespread scale, and the harvest and sale of prisoner human organs; and I am going to speak about what the heartfelt response of the American people ought to be.

It was just 64 years ago that the Nazi propaganda machine flaunted the Olympic Games coming to Munich and used that backdrop of legitimacy to launch the execution of 6 million Jews. In 1980, the Soviet Union touted the decision to have the Olympic Games in Moscow, and on the very eve of those Olympic Games launched its barbarous war against Afghanistan.

Now, as we look at the 2008 Olympic Games headed for Beijing, China, we are reminded of promises by that Communist regime to build eight new stadiums to prepare for the contestants. What they do not say is they have been using the older stadiums to stage sentencing rallies and to publicly condemn prisoners to death. Prisoners are brought to the stadiums, as we learned

last week, held in leg irons where audiences are required to watch their sentencing as a lesson in obedience to the law and government; and after the show, prisoners are paraded off to a firing squad. It is frightening and medieval stuff.

China today executes more people than all other countries in the world combined, according to Amnesty International, some 20,000 executions over the last decade, an average of 40 people a week; and that is just what is public, Mr. Speaker. Not only are they engaged in the moral horror of widespread public summary executions, but also China is in the business of carefully executing persons and then quickly harvesting prisoners' organs for sale on the international market. We heard from State Department officials who even acknowledged this.

It is an extraordinary thing, to say the least. The practice of taking human organs from condemned prisoners is in itself condemned by every known standard of medical ethics in the civilized world, and it goes on with American and Western customers paying top dollar for those organs each and every day.

I call on the United States of America and our State Department, as I did in the congressional hearing, to act in a number of ways, to issue a warning through HHS and the CDC to American citizens who are traveling abroad to the Asian Pacific Rim of not only the dangers of obtaining a human organ, but of the profound immorality of doing so. It is imperative that the United States of America speak in moral terms of that which is immoral, and it is immoral to harvest organs from condemned prisoners.

I also challenge the administration to rethink this entire business of engagement and to do as Ronald Reagan did whenever his administration did visit the Evil Empire, the Soviet Union. They met with dissidents; they associated themselves with people who were advancing freedom. The Good Book tells us, I am a friend to those who fear you, and so the United States should be to the Chinese people, a friend to those who cherish liberty and cherish the sanctity of human life and condemn the outrage of mass executions and the harvesting of human organs.

Mr. Speaker, as the American people saw on national television this morning, the Indiana flood of 2003 moved forward at a heartbreaking, record-setting pace. I have appeared here in this chamber to tell you the St. Mary's River in Decatur, Indiana, crested last night at nearly 28 feet, an all-time historic high for that river. I have also mentioned the flooding in Bluffton, Indiana caused by record water levels on the Wabash River.

Mr. Speaker, I'd also like to recognize other areas of East Central Indiana affected by the flood of 2003 and those that have worked so hard to assuage the damage. Heroes such as Tami Mann, Director of Jay County Emergency Management. Robert Sours, Superintendent of the Jay County Highway Department and his crew. Jay County engineer Dan Watson.

I'd further like to thank all the city and county police officers in the areas affected. The Hoosier Heartland Chapter of the American Red Cross for its courageous work. And the countless volunteers who have worked diligently to battle the flooding. Their heroic efforts have kept roads open and communities safe.

The chaplain said today that ``unless the Lord watches over the city'' and surely, Mr. Speaker, we would ask the Lord to watch over these communities in Indiana affected by the flood of 2003 and all those who labored to protect them.

Mr. Speaker, last night the Wabash River in northeastern Indiana crested at an incredible 25 feet. However, thanks to the extraordinary leadership of Mayor Ted Ellis and Sheriff Barry Story, Bluffton, IN, was spared a catastrophe.

Their leadership, in cooperation with Gov. Frank O'Bannon, and literally thousands of volunteers in Wells and Adams counties managed to stem the tide. Special commendation should go to Irving Material Incorporated and also to the Indiana National Guard's 2nd Battalion of the 151st Infantry. Under the leadership of General George Buskirk and Colonel Rick Shatto nearly 200 troops loaded and stacked sandbags and helped save the community of Bluffton, IN.

As more rain approaches, I urge the President to speed disaster relief to the counties in Indiana that the Governor has requested. I encourage the volunteers for their determination to move forward as the rain approaches and I urge prayers by all citizens to remember the cry of the Psalmist when he wrote, ``God is our refuge and our strength, though the earth be removed, though its waters roar and be troubled, we will not fear.''

Mr. Speaker, as the American people saw on national television this morning, the Indiana flood of 2003 moved forward at a heartbreaking, record-setting pace.

The St. Mary's River in Decatur, IN, crested last night at nearly 28 feet, an all-time historic high for that river and the Wabash River as well.

But, because of the work of local heroes like Decatur Mayor Fred Isch, Fire Chief David Brinneman, State Master Sergeant Roger Popplewell, and National Guard Unit Leader Sergeant Mike Heister, thousands of volunteers filled more than 176,000 sandbags in Decatur, IN alone.

And when the St. Mary's River crested, it did not break the levee. There are so many to be commended, but I remember two in particular-- Decatur police officer Mark Cook, who organized the sandbag filling at the Wal-Mart parking lot and even 13-year-old Melanie Vergary who went out and worked and stuffed bags.

The chaplain said today that ``unless the Lord watches over the city'' and surely, Mr. Speaker, we would ask the Lord to watch over this city and all the cities in Indiana affected by the flood of 2003 and all those who labored to protect them.

Mr. Speaker, as the American people saw on national television this morning, the Indiana flood of 2003 moves forward at a heartbreaking, record-setting pace. The St. Mary's River in Decatur, Indiana, crested last night at nearly 28 feet, an all-time historic high for that river, and the Wabash River as well. But because of the work of local heroes, like Decatur Mayor Fred Isch, Fire Chief David Brinneman, State Police Master Sergeant Rodger Popplewell, and National Guard Unit Leader Sergeant Mike Hiester, thousands of volunteers filled more than 176,000 sandbags in Decatur, Indiana, alone. And when the St. Mary's River crested, it did not break the levee.

There are so many to be commended, but I remember two in particular, Decatur Police Officer Mark Cook, who organized the sandbag filling at the Wal-Mart parking lot, and even 13-year-old Melanie Vergary, who went out and worked and stuffed bags.

The Chaplain said today, ``unless the Lord watches over the city.'' Surely, Mr. Speaker, we would ask the Lord to watch over this city and all the cities in Indiana affected by the flood of 2003 and all those who labored to protect it.

Mr. Speaker, last night the Wabash River in northeastern Indiana crested at an incredible 25 feet. However, thanks to the extraordinary leadership of Mayor Ted Ellis and Sheriff Barry Storie, Blufflon, Indiana was spared a catastrophe.

Their leadership, in cooperation with Governor Frank O'Bannon, and literally thousands of volunteers in Wells and Adams counties managed to stem the tide. Special commendation should go to Irving Material Incorporated and also to the Indiana National Guard's 2nd Battalion of the 151st Infantry. Under the leadership of General George Buskirk and Colonel Rick Shatto nearly 200 troops loaded and stacked sandbags and helped save the community of Blufflon, Indiana.

As more rain approaches, I urge the President to speed disaster relief to the counties in Indiana that the Governor has requested. I encourage the volunteers for their determination to move forward as the rain approaches and I urge prayers by all citizens to remember the cry of the Psalmist when he wrote, ``God is our refuge and our strength, though the earth be removed, though its waters roar and be troubled, we will not fear.''