Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, we're now some 11 weeks out from the tragedy that occurred in Newtown, Connecticut. And while all the talk today is about the sequester, we still have politicians and pundits all across the country that are purporting to try and solve this epidemic of gun violence with new rules taking away guns from ordinary citizens.

Unfortunately--and this is humbling for many in politics--no law or set of laws can possibly address in a meaningful way all of the challenges that we face today with a violent America. In fact, we face a much deeper, more malignant problem. It's a culture that degrades and cheapens life.

That's why I continue to be disappointed to hear the President propose further gun control. The President's plan isn't so much an attempt to solve a problem as an attempt to fulfill a wish list for gun control advocates. Unfortunately, for the American people, an opportunity for a real national dialogue on the root causes of this type of violence is being missed.

I've heard from hundreds of Kansans on the issue of gun control, and the vast majority of them understand that Washington restricting their Second Amendment rights will do very little

to end the violence in our society or to improve the safety of their families or in their schools of their children.

Mr. Speaker, when I go around in Kansas and talk to folks and talk to them about a business that supports 1.2 million American jobs and over $150 billion of wealth creation across the U.S. economy and ask, ``What do you think a President would do if they knew about an industry like that?'' they'd all say the same thing folks all across the country would say. They'd say that the President ought to encourage that, ought to thank the people that work in that industry, and ought to promote that industry all across the world, a great American- manufactured product doing great things in America.

Yet, that industry, the general aviation industry, is used by our President as a rhetorical punching bag. Everywhere he goes, he talks about corporate fat-cat jet owners and those rich, wealthy people flying around in corporate airplanes.

Well, I know what this industry does. I came from this industry. I know precisely who these people are. When you use language like that and you talk about an American manufacturing industry in that way, you're talking about welders, you're talking about union mechanics, and you're talking about all the support people that work at fixed-base operations all across the country. You're talking about good, hardworking Americans, not corporate fat-cat jet owners.

Yet this President continues in the same way that he has. I had hoped that I wouldn't have to come back and talk about it again, but I anticipate that tonight, from this very Chamber, we'll hear about those same corporate fat-cat jet owners yet again.

The general aviation industry doesn't ask for a handout, and it doesn't need what Detroit received. It only asks that a President acknowledge and recognize the importance of this industry. It creates aircraft that are used by small businessowners all across the Nation to get to places they need to be. Every week, I fly on commercial aircraft from here back to Wichita, Kansas. It's no easy task. If you want to get to two or three of your suppliers or four or five of your customers in a day located all throughout the heartland, the most efficient tool to use to do that is a general aviation airplane.

And, of course, we know the President understands that, Mr. Speaker. He flies around in the nicest personal aircraft in the history of the world, actually built in Wichita, Kansas. And government employees use general aviation aircraft to travel all around the country. They do so because it is an efficient means of conducting their business.

Now, when the President talks about these corporate fat-cat jet owners, he's doing so because he says he wants to close a loophole, he wants to generate more money coming to Washington, D.C., and he talks about this subsidy. We looked long and hard to find out what subsidy it was he was referring to. Frankly, we think it is a depreciation schedule--a depreciation schedule--something that every asset in America is subject to. Yet, somehow,

he has picked on this particular depreciation schedule as offensive and antithetical to the American way of life.

Mr. President, the revenue that is generated in 1 year if we eliminated the provision about which we think you're speaking, Mr. Speaker, would generate enough revenue to run the government for a single day--1 day. Yet, Mr. Speaker, the President continues to use this language of class warfare against an industry that has created so many tens of thousands of jobs all across our country. It is unexplainable why anyone would be critical of this industry.

The President has also proposed a new tax, a general aviation fee, of $100 per flight segment, which would require an entire new bureaucracy to implement and to execute. It is incomprehensible to me why anyone would think that was the right approach.

Mr. Speaker, I have invited the President of the United States to come to Wichita, Kansas, to see Beechcraft, to see Cessna, and to see Learjet and to see all the suppliers and all of the people who work so hard to make these airplanes. He has not taken me up on that yet, Mr. Speaker. I urge that he do so. But, sadly, if he continues to decline and continues to talk about this industry in the way that he does, he will not suffer, but tens of thousands of Americans who work on these airplanes all across the country will.

I hope, Mr. Speaker, that the President will change his direction, change his course of action, and recognize the value of this important industry.

Today, I stand here on the 40th anniversary of one of the worst decisions of our United States Supreme Court. It was deeply flawed. Too many Justices spoke of emanations of penumbras but missed the core principle contained in the Constitution: this notion that every human being is endowed with this special dignity that we call life.

The cost of that decision has been enormous: 55 million souls were not brought into this world. We can feel it in families torn asunder and in lives that didn't get to become the next great leaders in our Nation. These lives were lost to each of us. They're lost to the families. They're lost to our community. They're lost to their Maker.

But I want to talk today about hope. Ever since this decision in 1973, there's been a march. And I was in the Army. When you march, you march to victory. We've had this special march. We'll have this march again this week. We'll have it in Kansas. Kansas has a very special relationship to this march.

In 1991, in Wichita, Kansas, the city which I represent, we held the Summer of Mercy, where people came together in peace to talk about these lives that should have been protected but had not been. And this week, the airlines permitting, I'll be back to watch young people from all across south central Kansas board buses bound for Washington, D.C. I'll see them off from churches and cathedrals and synagogues, folks coming to Washington, D.C., to once again march on this town to demand that we do everything we can in our power here in Washington, D.C., to protect every human life.

I'm very proud of the rich history and the contribution that the citizens of the Fourth District of Kansas have made to this movement. It is certainly important to me as a matter of faith. But as a matter of science, we have

this one right as well. We must protect every unborn life. I'm dedicated to doing so. I look forward to being with that next generation, these young people coming to Washington, D.C., so this fight can continue.

Today, I rise to talk about a bird, the Lesser Prairie Chicken. Actually, it's not about the bird; it's about jobs. I happen to represent Cassoday, Kansas, the American capital of the Lesser Prairie Chicken.

The Environmental Protection Agency and this administration are about to do great harm to the bird but, more importantly, present great risk to energy exploration all across America. They want to put the Lesser Prairie Chicken under the Endangered Species Act. The impact of this decision will be enormous on our burgeoning domestic energy industry. Millions of public acres could be closed to exploration, and a labyrinth of bureaucratic nightmares awaits any investor foolish enough to explore land that might be home to even one Lesser Prairie Chicken. The uncertainty that listing this bird would create will discourage investments where they are most needed in our country.

It's time to find a practical, realistic solution to protect our environment and spur economic growth, but manipulating the Endangered Species Act and exploiting the Lesser Prairie Chicken is simply wrong.

Mr. Speaker, today I rise in support of the 1,300 citizens of

Buhler, Kansas--and indeed all Kansans--and in fact all Americans who value religious freedom and religious liberty.

The citizens of Buhler are under assault. They are the latest victims of an ungodly extortion racket perpetrated by the Freedom from Religion Foundation based in Madison, Wisconsin.

On September 14, 2012, the Freedom from Religion Foundation sent a letter to the mayor of the town of Buhler, Daniel Friesen, alerting him to the foundation's intent to sue the city for its city seal, which contained a cross, and for a billboard that included elements of that city seal that was in a city park. Mr. Speaker, this is an outrage. The seal and sign are harming no one; they are widely embraced by the citizens of Buhler, Kansas.

The seal contains the words ``traditional values'' and ``progressive ideas.'' Unfortunately, in this case, progressive ideas are making war on traditional values, and it's high time for that to stop.

Some will claim that the First Amendment to the Constitution requires the cross to be removed from this seal and sign. That's hogwash. The First Amendment begins with the words: ``Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.'' In this instance, Congress made no law. For that reason alone the First Amendment does not apply.

Furthermore, it cannot be said that this simple seal in any way is an establishment of religion; meaning that there is no officially supported sect or denomination here in the manner that some of the American colonies had. This is not in any way an endorsement of any particular religion or any religious denomination.

In short, the First Amendment, as originally written, has nothing to do with this city's sign. Indeed, for the first 175 years of our constitutional history, no one would have read the First Amendment in any way that would have prevented this seal or this sign.

Mr. Speaker, in this very room in which I stand, this very Chamber, right over my right-hand shoulder is a sign that says ``In God We Trust.'' Near the rotunda of the Capitol is the Congressional Prayer Room, a chapel that's been in use since 1955 as a place where Members go to pray for divine guidance in debating the issues of the day. A stained glass window there shows President George Washington kneeling in prayer and the words of Psalm 16:1 surround him: ``Preserve me, O God, for in thee do I put my trust.'' And a Holy Bible rests on the alter beneath that window in this very building.

Of course I grant you that the First Amendment has been badly interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court. Indeed, the 10th Circuit's rulings are even more troubling. It could well be that in this case the city would lose this case.

I don't fault the citizens of Buhler, Kansas, for the process that they're going through in trying to figure out how to proceed. Indeed, the Freedom from Religion Foundation knows this. They know that they've attacked a city, threatened to sue a city with very few resources. We will have a very difficult time battling an extended period of litigation. I do not fault the folks in Buhler at all for trying to figure out a way to move forward without resulting in litigation.

But why didn't the Freedom from Religion Foundation sue the United States Congress for all that I spoke about just a minute ago? The reason is obvious. The reason is they are being bullies. They are seeking to put their secular vision in a place where they believe they can do it without opposition, a place that has fewer resources. Folks will face a very, very difficult decision about how the town and the city should move forward.

Mr. Speaker, I hope that this assault on religion in the public square will end soon. I am very saddened by the recent events in Buhler, Kansas. I am angered by the extortionary tactics of the Freedom from Religion Foundation. And, above all, I am determined to ensure that the religious heritage of our great Nation will not be cast aside.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

When you think of coal and jobs, you don't necessarily think of Kansas. But in Kansas we depend on affordable, abundant energy to build airplanes, to grow crops--all of the things that come with affordable energy. This legislation stopping the President's war on coal is important to jobs not only in coal country, but in Kansas and everyplace. We're trying for economic growth all across the country.

It's simply implausible to imagine how you can regulate an industry and try and shut down any new coal-fired power plants, and then try and take money and subsidize it and think you've got good energy policy all across America. It should come as no surprise that we have 23 million people out of work, economic growth under 2 percent, and these EPA regulations that continue, one on top of another, are a primary cause of that.

I urge my colleagues to support this legislation.

Mr. Chairman, I wanted to come down to support this piece of legislation. It's important to America and to the taxpayers to protect them. I want to thank Chairman Stearns and Chairman Upton for letting me participate in this important investigation.

Just yesterday, two facts that I think support us completely in passing this legislation. Yesterday, that conservative jewel, The New York Times, reported that Mr. Spinner, who was critical to pushing this loan guarantee through when the Obama administration was inclined to reject it but kept pushing and whose wife was counsel to the company, was reported by The New York Times to be the number 10 bundler for this administration.

Also yesterday, we had a hearing in which we saw that America has the opportunity to become energy independent within the next decade if the Federal Government will just get out of the way and stop picking winners and losers as we have done with these Department of Energy loan guarantees for far too long. I'm confident that we can move away from this program. I'd urge all of my colleagues to support it.

The conservative groups of the American Conservative Union, AFP, Americans for Tax Reform, Heritage Action, Let Freedom Ring, and the National Taxpayers Union have all submitted letters in support of this legislation.

It's time to end this loan guarantee program, and we should do it today.

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, I rise to strike the Rapid Innovation Fund and save the taxpayers over $250 million. As a veteran, I know how important it is that we use every single dollar that goes to our Department of Defense in an intelligent way.

This fund, this Rapid Innovation Fund, has never been requested by the Pentagon. This is money that the Pentagon doesn't say that it wants. It was created in the FY 2011 Defense bill in response, frankly, to the loss of earmarks here in the House of Representatives. So far the Appropriations Committee has put over $700 million in 2 years into this fund, and yet to date the Department of Defense has spent only $32.5 million of the $700 million already appropriate and provided.

But instead of waiting to see if the fund is working and if it could be successful and of any value to the warfighter, this year the committee is pushing for another $250 million of taxpayer money to go into the so-called Rapid Innovation Fund.

I urge my colleagues to reject this effort. First of all, the Pentagon, as I said, never asked for this money. Four DOD agencies declined an invitation to even participate in the fund. There is clearly no one in the military clamoring for what is essentially a slush fund. With sequestration looming, now is the time to make tough choices, not to add $250 million of wasteful spending. We must focus our very scarce resources on validated military requirements.

Second, this Rapid Innovation Fund is neither rapid, nor innovative. The fund allows the Department of Federal Acquisition Regulations Procedures to move forward--just as they do for any other procurement process. The first contracts took over a year to be signed. I don't find anything rapid about that. In addition, this fund simply doles out money to projects that are similar to those previously supported by the now-discredited earmark system. There's nothing innovative about that either.

Let me be clear: this fund was created by Congress because Congress ended earmarks, and some have wanted a way to have earmark-type projects continue to receive government money.

This fund is, third, wasteful and unnecessary. The DOD base budget is well over $500 billion--built through a time-honored and trusted process to ensure the needs of our warfighters. This fund, however, is completely outside of this process and therefore advances projects that have not been validated and are not proven in this same manner.

Finally, the fund itself is unproven. Only $30 million and change has been spent on this fund and there is no data demonstrating that this fund holds any value to our military or to our taxpayers. But even if it does, there's still $670 million sitting in the fund today. Why not just wait? At the current spending rate, there's over 10 years' worth of funds still available. Why put $250 million more of taxpayer money at risk?

As a Congress, we have to be willing to make tough choices--certainly in our DOD budget. But this one isn't even tough. We can't just throw good money in the hole and hope it helps our Nation's defense.

I urge my colleagues to support this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Will the gentleman yield?

I just say to the chairman, I'm not urging anyone to rush out and spend this money. I'm urging this money to stay in the pockets of the taxpayers because the Department of Defense has not asked for it. All of the things that have been spoken to, these good ideas, I was a small business owner. I made airplane parts for 10 years. I don't want anybody to rush out and spend the money. I want to leave it in the taxpayers' pockets, where the Department of Defense believes it should be.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, H.R. 4480, the Domestic Energy and Jobs Act, the legislation we'll vote on before too long, has three very simple missions. The first is to lower and create affordable energy for folks all across America. The second is to create the jobs that go with it. And, finally, it's to begin to put American energy policy back on a commonsense, simple standard that allows affordable energy to be produced here in America by Americans for Americans.

You know, we've seen in these discussions, these debates, that there are two opposing views on how to do this. The first is the view of the folks on the other side who think if we just had one more rule, one more set of regulations, another subsidy, another handout from the taxpayers, we here in Washington, D.C. could find that next great affordable energy source. We've seen how that's worked. We've got gasoline at $3.50 a gallon. We've got utilities all across the country asking for rate increases.

There's another view. There's another way to go about it. It's to let the market respond to price signals. It's to get the Federal Government out of the way, to reduce regulations across the board while making sure that we've still got safe drinking water and clean air. Both of these objectives can be accomplished.

This legislation simply streamlines and simplifies the leasing and permitting processes on Federal lands to make sure that consumers have access to affordable American energy. We have tremendous opportunities right here in America. Right in Kansas' Fourth Congressional District, in Harper and Kingman and Stafford and Edwards and Barber and Pratt, all over south central Kansas, an enormous new opportunity, creating real, affordable energy produced by Americans with American jobs.

We also, through this legislation, say if we're going to tap this important American resource, the SPR, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, we're going to make sure and replenish it--again, with American affordable energy.

This is one of the most consumer-friendly, ratepayer-friendly, taxpayer pieces of energy legislation to reach the House floor in a long time, and I would urge all my colleagues to support this legislation.

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

Mr. Chairman, just as Congresswoman Jenkins opposed this amendment, I urge my colleagues to vote against this amendment as well.

The facility at NBAF is a facility that is not just about Kansas. It's important that it's in Kansas. I'm happy that Kansas went through an incredible competition against businesses all across the State and facilities all across the country to make sure that we had the best facility, the facility that was right not for Kansas, but right for America. After that competition, Manhattan, Kansas, was chosen for the site of the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility, and now Kansas and the United States have already invested heavily in this facility. It's a facility that creates a biosafety lab level four. It's like no other asset, no other national security asset in America. It's incredibly important. It's important for our food supply and safety for human health.

It's not a partisan issue. It was supported by both the Bush and Obama administrations and was passed through both a Republican- and a Democrat-controlled Congress. So there's no partisan nature to what's going on at the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility. It's simply about national security.

There have now been multiple reports and commissions indicating that this kind of threat is one of the most imminent threats to our Nation's entire homeland security. It's been for that reason that DHS has been very supportive of NBAF and NBAF being built in Kansas.

The State is uniquely qualified. It has exactly the right kind of scientific experts and precisely the expertise to be applied immediately and for the facility to be built in a way that it can operate safely.

We've got to protect animals and people from disease and make sure that when we do that our communities are safe and secure. This is a challenge that our country is ready and able to undertake at the facility in Kansas.

I urge my colleagues to reject this effort to delay this critical development essential to the health and safety of our food supply, and ultimately the safety of the American people.

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

Mr. Speaker, just a few days after Memorial Day, I rise in support of a new resolution introduced by Mr. Gingrey to honor America's Patriot Guard Riders. The Patriot Guard started in August of 2005 in Mulvane, Kansas, the southern part of the district which I represent, with a group of folks from VFW Post 136; and it now numbers over 220,000 patriotic Americans.

These great Patriotic Guard Riders attend funerals and protect the families from unwanted intrusion during this important time after the servicemembers have fallen. They visit veterans at hospitals and meet with the family members of the soldiers, and they contribute their time and their dollars to scholarships for the families of America's fallen soldiers.

I urge my colleagues to join me in cosponsoring Mr. Gingrey's resolution, H. Res. 669, and in honoring this group of patriotic Americans known as our Patriot Guard Riders.

Mr. Chairman, I want to first start by commending Chairman Rogers and Ranking Member Ruppersberger for their great work on crafting this bipartisan bill, a strong piece of legislation that addresses some tremendously important issues that face our country.

While this legislation in its detail--and we've heard the chairman speak about it--talks about new initiatives and programs and three- letter Agencies, this is about something different from that. This is about protecting the American people. This is about keeping the citizens of El Dorado and Coffeyville and Wichita and Anthony, Kansas, safe against a staggeringly large and very real threat.

On September 11, now over a decade ago, we began to enter a very different time, very different war. Now 15 years ago, I was serving in the military. I served along the East German border. Then it was different. We could see the enemy. They wore uniforms. There were fences and boundaries. And today, we live in a very, very different world. And this legislation, the 2013 Intelligence bill, attempts to, in a fiscally responsible way while protecting the privacy of every American citizen in a conscientious way, address those very real threats.

It is easy sometimes to forget--to forget from a decade ago and forget that al Qaeda is still there, active and trying, fighting vigorously to take down the American way of life. And to see this thoughtful piece of legislation put together in a way that both parties could agree to, that both parties could say this makes sense, these are the resources we have available, we're going to do this in a fiscally prudent way, is something that I think should encourage each of us and cause every Member to support this legislation.

We can't allow anyone to forget that this threat is real. The gravity and consequences of not having an active and capable intelligence set of agencies and forces is too important. I know the chairman and ranking member both understand this, and I want to thank them for their work. I want to encourage each and every one of my colleagues to support the FY 2013 Intelligence Authorization bill.

Madam Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

I rise in opposition to this amendment. Just because you call something ``economic development'' does not make it so. We could name an Agency many things. This administration is one that most folks have never heard of. I had never heard of it before I came to Congress 16 months ago. This is a classic case of the Federal Government taking from one and giving to another, often for the benefit of private companies.

You'll see in a minute that I have got an amendment that takes a very different approach to economic development and how we ought to attack this problem. But I heard the distinguished gentleman from Maine talk about job creation. It's one thing for elected officials to go to a ribbon-cutting and stand in front of a facility and talk about jobs and say those are all the jobs that we created when, in fact, those jobs were created by taking money from taxpayers. Where elected officials often don't want to go is to stand in front of the unemployment line or talk about folks who had to pay too much in taxes or stand there and tell someone why that company got money and the company over on the other side didn't get this particular grant from the Economic Development Administration.

I have seen this Agency up close and personal. It is a very, very political use of capital. This is not the free market that we all know. This is an agency that distributes money all over the country, very, very intentionally into 400-plus districts all across America with the aim of making sure that this Agency continues to exist in perpetuity. This is precisely the kind of stimulus that we have demonstrated time and time again in America. It doesn't work. And for that reason, I oppose increasing the funding for the Economic Development Administration.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Will the gentlewoman yield?

Thank you very much for yielding.

You said that, because I'm in my first term, maybe I didn't understand. Perhaps it's because you've been here a couple of years that you don't appreciate how jobs are really created in the real world, not here in Washington, D.C.

You talked about Kansas. You may have forgotten that the air capital of the world, where 60, 70 percent of all aircraft are manufactured-- indeed, the business I was in for a decade--was good manufacturing jobs. What we didn't need was more taxes and more government spending. What we needed was the government out of the way.

Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Chair, I rise today to talk about something that Congress doesn't often get a chance to do. I talk to my constituents, and they often tell me, you know, we never get rid of anything. Programs just continue on and on. They grow. They go away for a little bit, and then they come back.

We have a real opportunity here. My amendment is to eliminate the entire Economic Development Administration. We are $16 trillion in debt. This gives Members on both sides an opportunity to start addressing a serious spending problem in a real way. This is an amendment that has bipartisan support that I will talk about in just a little bit. Having spent over $1.5 billion on grants, the EDA does nothing but simply pick winners and losers by region, by industry, by community, and by particular businesses. It is very similar to earmarks.

This administration uses the EDA to advance local projects and narrowly benefit a particular company or group. At its core, it is nothing more than a wealth-redistribution program, a stimulus bill built up in the nature of an Agency that has been around since 1965.

Let me describe how it works. It begins by taking dollars from all across the country. That money flows to Washington, DC and before it ever goes back out, over 20 percent of it is consumed here in Washington, DC, no value returned. Then it asks companies and communities to apply for free money from the Federal Government to renovate a movie theater or build a road, for a new industrial park. Some of these projects are ridiculous; some of them perhaps not so bad. However, each one is a local project that the Federal Government has no business being involved in, and almost every one of these projects would advance without taxpayer resources.

A frequent flier, the EDA Administrator travels all around the country for groundbreakings and ribbon-cuttings, taking credit for creating jobs when it was really private companies that would have created them anyway. He proudly took credit for a $1.6 billion steel plant in Minnesota with a $1.4 million EDA grant. This is one-tenth of 1 percent of the project. I promise you that the CEO of that steel plant had no idea that that money was in his capital structure.

Now, you might not be familiar with EDA projects, so let me talk about just a couple. In 2008, the EDA provided $2 million to begin construction of the Harry Reid Technology Park. As best I can tell, that facility continues to be empty.

Sometime later, the EDA granted money for a culinary amphitheater, some $2 million of your taxpayer money.

Then, $1.5 million for what I am sure is a beautiful theater, but what business does the Federal Government have in providing money for a theater such as this? We have many in Kansas, too. We didn't happen to get this particular grant. We didn't strike the EDA lottery.

And, finally, half a million dollars as far back as the 1980s to build replicas of Egyptian pyramids. To this day, you can't drive to this facility that is uncompleted. Half a million dollars of taxpayer money spoiled and wasted.

I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this amendment. Groups like the Business Coalition for Competition, Club for Growth, Heritage Action--folks who believe in the private sector's capacity to create jobs support this.

I will close with this thought. I talked about this bill being bipartisan. The Simpson-Bowles Commission included the elimination of EDA in its projections. It said this Agency ought to go away, on a bipartisan basis. But more, perhaps surprisingly, in 2008, I want to quote from then-Senator now-President Barack Obama who criticized the EDA as ``little more than a fund for corporate welfare.''

Madam Chair, I agree with the President, and I hope my colleagues will join me in supporting the Pompeo amendment to this bill.

With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Offered By: Mr. Pompeo

Amendment No. 3: Page 5, lines 17 through 21, after each

dollar amount, insert ``(reduced to $0)''.

Page 6, line 7, after the dollar amount, insert ``(reduced

to $0)''.

Page 101, line 10, after the dollar amount, insert

``(increased by $219,500,000)''.

I have an amendment at the desk.

I want to thank Chairman Rogers and Chairman Ruppersberger for their hard work on this important piece of legislation. I am among those folks who, when I first learned of this legislation, had some concerns to make sure that it was balanced and it did the right things. Also as a former Army officer, I recognize the deep national security implications of the cyberthreat, but I also wanted to make sure that we also did everything that was necessary to protect everyone's privacy rights.

This is a simple amendment. It makes clear that the liability protection in the bill with respect to the use of such systems only extends to the identification and acquisition of cyberthreat information and no further.

This is an unprecedented threat from countries like China and Russia. These are hostile nations, and they're committing resources, unprecedented resources, to attack U.S. networks each and every minute of every day. While this new threat is being developed by our foreign enemies, organized criminals and foreign hackers also just as easily deploy malicious cyberattacks to disrupt stock markets, transportation networks, businesses, governments, and even our military operations.

A devastating cyberattack could easily be unleashed from the remote comfort of enemies' computers thousands of miles away from our Nation. We must take this threat very, very seriously.

Part of the challenge in cyberspace is that a line of computer code could be just as deadly as a traditional military weapon. We've already seen these attacks used as an instrument of war. In 2008, Georgia suffered a significant cyberattack prior to the invasion by Russia. This attack crippled Georgia's banking system and disrupted the nation's cell phone services, helping to clear the battlefield for the invading Russians.

Perhaps the most significant dangerous activity in cyberspace even goes unnoticed. Cyberspies lay in wait for years in order to eventually steal precious military and economic secrets. Each of these examples further illustrates the need for legislation. Unfortunately, some civil liberties and privacy advocates claim that liability protection in this bill with respect to the use of cybersecurity systems could lead to broader activities than authorized.

This legislation doesn't do that, but my amendment simply provides clarifying language to the original language of the bill, and thus enjoys the support of bipartisan cosponsors of the legislation, as well as the outside groups that raise these concerns.

Madam Chair, I urge approval of this amendment.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield as much time as he may consume to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Rogers), the chairman of the Intelligence Committee.

Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Chairman, I appreciate this opportunity to offer a second amendment to this incredibly important piece of legislation that's been worked on for an awfully long time to balance the security needs of our Nation and the privacy rights of every United States citizen.

Similar to the first amendment I offered, this amendment addresses some of the concerns raised by me, privacy folks, and civil libertarian advocates to make very clear the intentions of this legislation. I talked earlier about the threat we face today. It's real, it's foreign, it's domestic, and these cyberattacks are an enormous risk to our national security and to our economic security.

I now strongly support this legislation. I've had a chance to work with Chairman Rogers and Ranking Member Ruppersberger to solidify limitations on this legislation that make it very clear that this government's use of this information will be limited.

I think some have claimed incorrectly that the current bill could be read to provide new authority to the Federal Government to install its Einstein system on private sector networks and to monitor traffic and send it back to the government with absolutely no limitations. That's wrong.

This amendment, however, makes it even more clear. This amendment makes clear that nothing in this bill would alter existing authorities or provide any new authority to any entity to use a Federal Government- owned or -operated cybersecurity system on a private sector system or network to protect such a system or network.

Again, I'm pleased to support the legislation. It doesn't create any new regulatory regime. It doesn't create any more Federal bureaucracy. And it has no additional spending. I urge my colleagues to support this amendment and final passage of CISPA.

I yield whatever time he might consume to the chairman of the Intelligence Committee.

Madam Chairwoman, I yield back the balance of my time.