Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, last night the Wabash River crested at 25 feet in northeastern Indiana, but thanks to the extraordinary leadership of Mayor Ted Ellis and Sheriff Barry Story, Bluffton, Indiana, was spared a catastrophe. Their leadership and cooperation with Governor Frank O'Bannon and literally thousands of volunteers in Wells and Adams counties managed to stem the tide.

Special commendation to Irving Material, Incorporated, and also to the 2nd of the 152nd Mech out of Muncie, Indiana, under the leadership of General Bushkirk and Colonel Shato who led the troops, nearly 200 in number, in loading sandbags and stacking sandbags and saving the community of Bluffton, 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 of our citizens to remember the Psalmist wrote that God is our refuge and our strength. Though the Earth be removed, though its waters roar and be troubled, we will not fear.

Madam Speaker, as Congress considers the prescription drug legislation today, I think it is important for the American people to remember a few simple facts. This would be the biggest new Federal entitlement since 1965 when Medicare was created.

Medicare currently costs seven and a half times what this Congress said it would cost when they invented it.

Seventy-six percent of seniors in America today already have prescription drug coverage and according to the CBO under some versions of this legislation more than a third of those Americans who enjoy coverage from a private employer from whom they have retired could lose that coverage.

If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do? Let us not in this Congress today sow the seeds to destroy the foundation of a free market system by creating a universal drug benefit in Medicare. The answer is the reforms the President called for giving Americans the same choices that the Members of Congress have. It is not to create a massive new Federal entitlement.

Only in Washington, Mr. Speaker, could Congress be prepared to add a whole new entitlement to Medicare which may cost children like my today 10-year-old daughter Charlotte $7 trillion and Democrats are holding up tombstones to say Medicare is being phased out. It is astonishing to a conservative like me.

Today, Mr. Speaker, I informed our leadership that I cannot support the creation of a new Federal entitlement in the form of a universal drug benefit in Medicare, which is not to say that I am not ready today to help those at or near the level of poverty that are struggling with that terrible choice between food and rent and prescription drugs.

Let us focus resources at the point of the need and not answer the scare tactics of the other side and end up playing their game and creating an all new massive Federal entitlement that kids like my little Charlotte will have to pay for for generations.

Mr. Speaker, as Congress this week considers the largest expansion of Medicare in 35 years, we should begin with the understanding that Medicare has actually cost the American taxpayers 7\1/2\ times in real dollars what it was projected to cost. And while the needs for some prescription drug for some seniors is very, very real, it is important also to recall that 76 percent of seniors in America today have prescription drug coverage.

I would offer that our reforms this week should be about focusing solutions at the point of the need. Let us help our seniors near the poverty level with urgent and sufficient prescription drug coverage. Let us reform Medicare so it will be there for the future without placing an undue burden on our children and grandchildren. Let us otherwise do no harm to the private sector foundation of the greatest health care system in the history of the world.

For all these reasons I will oppose a universal drug benefit in Medicare. By agreeing to a prescription drug benefit for all seniors rather than just those in need, Congress threatens our Nation's fiscal stability, our own private prescription plans, and the survival of our free market health care system.

One more massive Federal entitlement is, simply put, a prescription for disaster.

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

Mr. Speaker, I was here, as you were, and as most of us in this institution were on the day September 11, 2001. It was a sunny day, just really very much like today. All of us were busy about our business, breakfast meetings of that Tuesday, when we received word of what happened in New York and then happened again and then happened within a proximity of these buildings that is still jarring to the memory of most Americans, the causality and the horrific tragedy at the Pentagon.

So this business of homeland security is a very serious and near-to- the-heart business for me. While I am not a member of the Committee on Appropriations that crafted the critical legislation upon which this rule is based, I am a member of the House Committee on the Judiciary's Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security; and I was compelled to come to the floor today, Mr. Speaker, and speak about what it is that we are doing in the majority for homeland security. And because there is much in the national debate and much in the debate on this blue and gold carpet that suggests that we are not doing our part. And I am duty-bound to come here today and say that I believe we are. In fact, I helped to draft the legislation that created the new Department of Homeland Security.

And the first priority of that new department, the first of its kind in decades, is to protect our Nation against further terrorist attack. Our first priority, Mr. Speaker, is to ensure the Department is properly funded to fulfill its mission. And I believe the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Rogers) and the members of the subcommittee who prepared this critical appropriations legislation in the area of homeland security have crafted a balanced bill that will keep our homeland safer in an age of growing terrorist threats, will meet those needs of first providers.

The bill recognizes the need for coordination at every level of homeland security. Here are a few examples: We do support State and local first responders, $1.9 billion for an Office of Domestic Preparedness basic formula grants; $500 million for State and local law enforcement terrorism prevention grants; $750 million for firefighters grants; $168 million for emergency management performance grants.

Also, this legislation today will do much to strengthen and protect our borders, porous as they have been, threatening our national security. This bill will provide $9 billion for border protection and related activities, including $129 million for inspection technologies for vehicles and cargo; $61.7 million for container security, and $12.1 million for Customs Trade Partnership Against Terrorism.

We also are enhancing the transportation security, $1.6 billion for passenger screening, $1.2 billion for baggage screening efforts, and the list goes on and on and on.

Mr. Speaker, much will be said today as we proceed through this rule, debate, and through general debate that the majority has not done enough. But there are literally billions and billions of dollars carefully crafted in the area of first responders, protecting our borders, transportation security that argue eloquently and forcefully otherwise.

I urge my colleagues to support the Homeland Security Appropriations Act and this rule. I believe it strikes a balance perfectly between the missions previously under the umbrella of other agencies that now find themselves under this new department.

Mr. Speaker, Marilyn (Isaacs) and Norman Cooper were high school sweethearts in Brooklyn, NY, who spent their first married years together at Fort Gordon, Georgia, during Norman's military service in the Korean Conflict. Returning to New York together, with little more than each other, they successfully built a thriving pest control business and raised a loving family.

Their passions for art, food, culture and adventure have taken Marilyn and Norman Cooper to the far reaches of the globe. While hiking the Andes, heli-skiing in New Zealand, on safari in Africa, lecturing in Japan or trekking in Tibet or India, they have developed an appreciation for the diversity of the world, as well as the common bonds of all humanity.

Marilyn and Norman Cooper have always sought to better the world around them, whether helping dissidents escape the Soviet Union during the cold war, volunteering for the Children's Blood Foundation in their hometown of Rye, NY, raising funds for the United Jewish Appeal, or helping other entrepreneurs achieve their dreams. Their enduring legacy includes three children and seven grandchildren, each imbued with their values of compassion, curiosity, intellect, creativity, love and the responsibility to help make the world a better place.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to claim the time of the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton).

Mr. Speaker, as the Congressman who represents Muncie, Indiana, and Delaware County, home to the most famous cat in the world, I rise today for the awesome and important duty to pay a happy birthday wish to Garfield. Not President Garfield, but someone probably more famous in this day and age than that, a large, orange, slovenly, lazy cat, born in the mind of an Indiana native by the name of Jim Davis who, along with Garfield and literally dozens of artists and artisans, make their home near Muncie, Indiana, the world headquarters of Paws, Incorporated.

It was, in fact, today in 1978 that the Garfield strip debuted in 41 U.S. newspapers. Several months after its launch, the Chicago Sun-Times abruptly canceled the Cat. Over 1,300 angry readers, it is reported, immediately demanded that Garfield be reinstated. As they say, the rest is history. Today, 263 million readers across the globe read Garfield in 2,570 newspapers every day. Recently, Guinness World Records named this cat, Garfield, the most widely syndicated comic strip in the world. It all comes proudly from east central Indiana.

It is said that people relate to Garfield because Garfield, in many ways, is them. ``He's a human in a cat suit,'' his creator Jim Davis likes to say. Garfield loves TV and he hates Mondays. He would rather pig out than work out. In fact, his passion for food and sleep is matched only by his aversion to diet and exercise, a cat after my own heart. He would like mornings better if they started later, coffee ``strong enough to sit up and bark,'' and, he pledges regularly, ``I'll rise but I won't shine.''

Jim Davis, born in July of 1945 in Marion, Indiana, was raised on a small Black Angus cow farm. He graduated from Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, where he majored in art and business and he is the founder and president of Paws, Incorporated, a full service licensing studio created and established in eastern Indiana. They have received numerous awards, including four Emmys and the National Cartoonist Society award, just to name a few.

So I rise today in the midst of serious debates and serious discussions to pay tribute to a very large, orange American tradition, here shown bursting out of his birthday cake on this, the 25th anniversary.

I will never forget, Mr. Speaker, as I close, Jim Davis and I first became acquainted 15 years ago. He told me of all the offers he had had through the years to move Garfield, which is internationally syndicated, maybe to Los Angeles or maybe to New York, more recognized as media centers than the cornfields of eastern Indiana, and Jim Davis said to me, ``Mike, I always turn them down, because you have to have a sense of humor to live in Indiana.'' Let us hope Jim Davis and this big orange cat always live in Indiana. They are a source of pride, not only their creativity and their energy, but their philanthropy and their commitment to the quality of life for the families of our region.

We thank you, Jim. Congratulations to you and that big, fat, lazy cat.

Mr. Speaker, I was amazed to hear the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich) speak in this Chamber just a few short moments ago and use the word ``cover-up'' to describe the action that we took in the House Committee on International Relations yesterday. The truth is that some Democrats just will not take yes for an answer.

The gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich) offered a resolution asking for the White House to turn over all information relative to the weapons of mass destruction for inspection by the Congress. The White House, at the urging of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, is doing just that. All documentation on the WMD program of Iraq will be available to every Member of Congress at the House Select Committee on Intelligence.

We rejected the Kucinich resolution because it was mute, as the ranking Democrat member of the Committee on International Relations says.

It is not a cover-up, Mr. Speaker. Some Democrats just will not take yes for an answer.

Mr. Speaker, the Bible tells us that pure religion is this: ``To look after widows and orphans in their distress.'' And I rise tonight, preparing to catch up with my wife and our three small children for dinner, feeling compelled in my heart to stand up on behalf of a young American woman and her two small children who at this very hour are hold up in the U.S. consulate in Jeddah in Saudi Arabia.

I rise to tell the story of Sarah Saga and her two little girls, this American woman, and to demand State Department action. As a member of the Committee on International Relations, I am obviously fascinated to see the House of Saud and the Government of Saudi Arabia engaging in a public relations campaign here in America. In markets across the country, our television screens are being flooded with a message that Saudi Arabia is a ``modern nation''; that America and Saudi Arabia have ``shared values.''

Prince Bandar Bin Sultan, the Saudi Arabia Ambassador to the United States, is part of a public relations offensive to change the image of the Saudi Government. But I would offer today, as is documented in today's editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, we do not need words, Mr. Speaker; we need actions by the House of Saud.

Sarah Saga's story began long ago. She found herself trapped in Saudi Arabia at the age of 6 when her Saudi father defied a U.S. custody agreement by simply refusing to return her to America after she visited her father in 1985. There she has languished ever since. Yet she never gave up on America or her American mom. This 6-year-old, now grown into a 23-year-old mother of two, used a computer to track her long-lost mother via the Internet and to tell her of her hopes for escape. She has made her way to the U.S. consulate in Jeddah, and there she languishes. Absent aggressive State Department actions and negotiations, there she will languish still.

Sadly, hers is just another story of another American woman who is trapped in Saudi Arabia, told that she is able to leave so long as she leaves her children behind. That is outrageous and utterly unacceptable. Prince Bandar told the Wall Street Journal back in September that it was ``absolutely not true'' that any American women were held against their will in Saudi Arabia. But the story of Sarah Saga tells otherwise.

So I rise tonight not to speak to the House of Saud, but rather to speak to the State Department of the United States of America and to the Bush administration and to Secretary of State Powell. As we negotiate a road map for peace in the Middle East, let us speak plainly to our allies in Saudi Arabia about the minimal expectations we have about American citizens and their progeny in their midst.

Sarah Saga and her two small children must be permitted to leave Saudi Arabia and make that long, at last, homecoming, delayed 17 years, to be in the home of her birth, the United States of America.

Mr. Speaker, last month this Congress, with the President's leadership, undertook to pass a tax relief measure that would get this economy moving again. Today, we will continue that good work with the All-American Tax Relief Act of 2003.

While some come to this floor, as we even heard this morning, and suggest that Republicans do not care about children, about 6.5 million families and 12 million children that they say were left out of the refundable per child tax credit, the truth is, Mr. Speaker, as we all know, it was Republican leadership that saw to it that that tax cut was already in place, set to take effect in 2005; but we will accelerate that today.

We will also encourage marriage by eliminating the marriage penalty. In the tax credit we will assist veterans and the heroes in space, we will do justice, we will love kids, and we will provide the compassionate Republican leadership that is so characteristic of this institution when we adopt the All-American Tax Relief Act today.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to file a supplemental report from the Committee on International Relations to accompany the bill H.R. 1950, the Foreign Relations Authorization Act, Fiscal Years 2004 and 2005.

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich), who just addressed this body, raised the issue that I suspect we will hear again and again before this Congress. Where are the WMDs, and who do you believe? Did the Bush administration mislead the American people?

Well, in answering the question of who you believe, I believe Saddam Hussein, Mr. Speaker, who in 1991 after being soundly defeated in the Persian Gulf War admitted to the U.N. agency responsible for monitoring the cease fire that he possessed 10,000 nerve gas warheads, 1,500 chemical weapons, and 412 tons of chemical weapons with 25 long-range missiles.

Even President Clinton when he bombed Baghdad in 1998 said he did so to ``attack Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological programs in its capacity to threaten its neighbors.''

As a State Department official told the Committee on International Relations last week, there was no change in the assessment of the WMD program from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration. Those weapons were there. The program was there. The President led America aright in this war.

Mr. Speaker, I was in the grocery checkout line buying some Motrin for my ailing 8-year-old daughter late this Saturday night; and the woman next to me, seeing me wearing something of a Republican T-shirt on the weekend but not recognizing me as a Congressman, said, ``I guess your President is in some hot water over weapons of mass destruction.'' And that seems to be what many on the other side of the aisle and many in the national debate would like to say about the President, that somehow this administration either directly or indirectly intentionally or unintentionally exaggerated the threat of weapons of mass destruction and the WMD program of the Nation of Iraq during the months and weeks leading up to Operation Iraqi Freedom. It is an extraordinary assertion, and as I went on to describe there in the checkout line last Saturday night and rise today to describe, it is patently untenable and ignores the real and demonstrable history of the nation of Iraq and the region.

First, a lesson in history. We go back to 1981 when Israel was forced to bomb Saddam Hussein's nuclear reactor at Osirak. In fact, the United Nations established at that time that Iraq had begun a nuclear weapons program and, in their words, chemical and biological weapons capability systems. In fact, in the immediate aftermath of the last Persian Gulf War, Saddam Hussein and his regime as a part of the cease fire agreement acknowledged extensive biological and chemical weapons programs; and I cite now from UNSCOM's sources, the U.N. agency responsible for overseeing the cease fire of Iraq, that Iraq itself acknowledged 10,000 nerve gas warheads, 1,500 chemical weapons, and 412 tons of chemical weapons agents.

Last week before the Committee on International Relations, John Bolton, the Under Secretary for Arms Control at the U.S. State Department testified before us; and I asked him very specifically, Mr. Speaker, whether or not the assessment of the WMD program in Iraq changed significantly from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration. He hesitated and then very carefully said it had not changed in any significant way and that in many respects the Clinton administration assessed the WMD program in Iraq precisely the same as the Bush administration did. Citing those hundreds of tons of chemical and biological agents that Iraq admitted it had in 1991, Under Secretary of State John Bolton said, ``Both administrations said these materials were unaccounted for.''

In fact, when President Clinton bombed Iraq in 1998 after they expelled our weapons inspectors, he justified the bombing by saying ``it was necessary to attack Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological programs and its capacity to threaten its neighbors.'' So said President Bill Clinton. So those who would say that in the 5 years leading up from the time Iraq expelled weapons inspectors to the time of Operation Iraqi Freedom that somehow, even though he refused to admit it, Saddam Hussein willingly and privately destroyed his enormous cache of weapons of mass destruction, ignore common sense, ignore history, the truth is, Mr. Speaker, we would have to believe the worst of George W. Bush and the best of Saddam Hussein to believe that there was not an extraordinary program of biological, chemical and even a nascent program for nuclear weapons being developed in the nation of Iraq and the capital of Baghdad.

Facts are stubborn things, and reciting those facts that Iraq admitted to in 1991 and establishing a decade-long pattern of deception and denial confirms, as our Iraqi survey group continues to scour that country for further evidence of a WMD program, I remain confident, as the President said yesterday, that we will not only continue to find evidence of a program, the mobile labs, the biological and chemical suits and the syringes that were found with antidotes for chemical deployments, but the day will come in the very near future, I am confident, that U.S. and coalition forces will find the elusive evidence of a program of weapons of mass destruction.

Mr. Speaker, today is a day of history and opportunity for the world and for the war-torn region known as the Middle East. I pray for the peace of Jerusalem and was yesterday greatly encouraged when five Arab leaders pledged to actively fight what they called the culture of extremism and violence in the region. I am also encouraged by Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas who has called for an end to violence against Israeli citizens. But I was astounded this morning when the network television shows were all stressing what our President today in Jordan must demand of our ally, Israel.

The truth is, as we welcome this day of history and opportunity, we must be

clear that any progress toward peace must require that Palestinians first recognize Israel; second, renounce terrorism; and, third, dismantle the infrastructure of murder within their midst. Then and only then can our Nation ask our ally Israel to make the concessions necessary for the advancement of peace.