Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening to talk about the Federal

debt. Now, President Bush was going to be a fiscal conservative and we were going to have smaller government. We actually have larger government. He has, in his 5 short years in office, in concert with the Republican Congress, raised the entire debt of the United States of America by 45 percent in 5 short years.

That is some accomplishment. That figures out to $27,730 per person in the United States. But that is not enough because, actually, with a debt limit of about $8.3 trillion, we bumped up against it yet again because of the profligate borrowing by this President and the Republican Congress. So Secretary Snow has requested a fourth increase in 5 years in the national debt limit by another $781 million, which he says will tide us over for about a year.

Now, what is extraordinary is that right now the Government of the United States is teetering on the edge of default. In fact, the government has cashed in the retirement fund, the 401(k) of Federal employees, the G fund, in order to not exceed the debt limit set by Congress, because the leadership here doesn't want to admit to their profligacy. They will not allow a vote, an up-or-down vote here in the House, on raising the debt limit. So they are waiting for the Senate to sneak it into a really big bill on the Senate side, and then they can bring it back over here and pretend that they had nothing to do with it. I mean, who could have known the debt has gone up 45 percent in 5 years?

Well, it is time that they `fessed up to what they are doing here. The fastest growing part of the Federal budget is not the entitlements which we hear so much about. We hear about those darned student loans that we cut last month so we could finance tax cuts for rich people; and those darned poor people who need health care that we cut last month to help finance tax cuts for rich people. Actually, the fastest part of the Federal deficit and budget is interest on the debt. That is true, interest on the debt, which will be $247 billion next year. One quarter of $1 trillion.

Now, that interest on the debt will not feed a single child. It will not help one young person get an education. It will not help one senior get a Medicare prescription drug benefit. It will not give one soldier help with needed equipment in the field. No, that $250 billion, a quarter of $1 trillion, will be paid out for profligacy and waste and debt.

What is even worse is, guess what, a lot of that money is not even flowing to investors here in the United States of America. This President has yet another record. He has, in 5 short years, created more foreign debt than the 42 Presidents that preceded him in office.

Now that is something. That is really something. One President, George Bush, has created more foreign debt than the 42 Presidents in more than 200 years that preceded him in office, this fiscal conservative, this small-government guy.

How has he do done it? Well, he has done it with a combination of increases in spending, a lot of corporate welfare, and tax cuts for rich people and major corporations, and subsidies to big corporations like in the energy bill, because there is not enough incentive at $60 a barrel to drill for oil; we have to borrow money, the taxpayers do, give it to the oil companies and ask them to go out and look for oil. That was sort of the core of the Bush energy bill.

Mr. Speaker, 48 percent of our public debt is now held overseas. Japan holds $687 billion, China is second and coming up fast at $300 billion, and on down the list. This is something that puts the future of our country in jeopardy. Huge amounts of our debt washing around overseas in countries that might or might not have our best interests in mind long term, and might or might not want to continue to lend us money to help finance this profligacy.

So now the President is saying that he is really serious. This time around he is really serious about it. He says we are going to address this. We are going to cut the debt in half in the next 4 years. What he does not tell people is that most of that so-called reduction of the debt is by borrowing all of the surplus that is supposed to flow into the Social Security trust fund and spending it and not counting it as part of the debt.

So as the Social Security surplus grows, he says that he is moving us toward a balanced budget. Of course someday we are going to have to honor those bonds to pay future Social Security benefits. It is time for fiscal sanity here in Washington, D.C. We need a change in the Congress and the White House to get it.

Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to talk about foreign ownership of critical United States infrastructure assets. A number of people have followed the controversy regarding the UAE control over a number of critical American ports.

Now, there is certainly some room for concern there, as many of us have spoken previously. The UAE was very closely tied to the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks. They were one of three governments in the world that recognized the Taliban.

They have recently been useful and helpful to the United States of America, but the history is not great, and people may have been embedded years ago in their government who would control it, it is not a private entity, who would be not friendly towards the interests of the United States. So there is concern there.

And the concern is even compounded by the fact that we do not know who owns the ships. The U.S. has bound itself through international agreements that allow secret ownership of ships under flags of convenience, countries that barely exist or do not exist, Liberia, Malta, who is very happy to make money on this, but turns a blind eye. Osama bin Laden could own a fleet of ships. We are not allowed to know. But they can dock here in United States.

We have done nothing about that. We do not know who crews the ships. They can buy papers in the Philippines and in International Maritime Organization School that the U.S. has been forced to recognize by being part of this agreement. And, again, we do not know who these people are.

So we do not know who crews the ships, we do not know who owns the ships, we do not know what is on the ships. They have to send us a manifest and tell us what might be on the ship. It is an electronic transmission or a piece of paper. That does not mean that is what is really on the ship.

We do not track the ships from port to port, so they could have stopped somewhere. Even if they do not have a nuclear bomb on board when they left Singapore, they could have picked one up on the way. And then we do not have the equipment that we need on this side of the ocean.

So that is a tremendous concern. If you add on the concern of the ownership of Dubai, it reaches even higher proportions.

But I also rise to talk about something else the Bush administration is trying to do. For them commerce is everything. National security is second or tertiary in terms of their concerns. They are trying to reinterpret the meaning of the word ``control.''

They said, when Congress said foreigners cannot control United States airlines, Congress did not mean control. In fact, in their world they are saying, well, foreigners could control U.S. airlines, they could only just control them commercially, but they could not safety and security.

If you have foreign management, foreign ownership, how do you wall off safety and security? So they are proposing, by administrative rule, sometime later this month or early next month, to defy the dictionary and legal interpretations of control and say Congress did not mean what it said.

Now, if you think there is an outcry about the ports, wait until we are sending U.S. troops overseas on what is called part of the Civilian Reserve Air Fleet. The large planes that our airlines fly are actually part of our Reserves, and we fly our troops with these planes over to the Mideast and other trouble spots around the world. Wait until we are asking U.S. troops to get onboard a plane being flown by a pilot from Dubai or from Indonesia or somewhere else around the world. This would be an extraordinary national security problem, in addition to losing domestic air service. Because what is happening here is airlines like United, who have been managed into the ground by overpaid CEOs, and others are looking to sell themselves out to foreign airlines. Their first choice is Lufthansa, but they may well go with the UAE, and then to cut off most of their domestic service, shed the wide-body planes and bring in foreign pilots to do the overseas routes and provide minimal domestic service.

So not only are we putting at threat our national security and the Civilian Reserve Air Fleet, we are also putting at risk the American public and we are certainly degrading the capability of providing the service we need to have a system of universal air transport which serves our economy and the businesses in the United States of America.

This is a colossally bad idea with the Bush administration trying to do it in back rooms by pretending that when Congress said foreigners cannot control our airlines that we did not really mean it.

If the Bush administration persists in this, 6 months or a year from today, we will be here on the floor of the House if this Congress does not preempt this, which they have thus far refused to do. If they do not preempt this, we will be back here arguing about the UAE or Indonesia or some other country taking over a major U.S. airline and the assets of our Civilian Reserve Air Fleet. We should preclude that.

Next week when we bring up prohibition of ownership of critical infrastructure assets, airlines should be part of that bill. There is big resistance from the administration and some of the leadership. The membership has to overcome that and do what is right for the American people and national and economic security.

Madam Speaker, the view from the country club is great. We have heard a few Republicans waxing poetic about how good the economy is. Jobs, prosperity, happy days are here again. All due to the tax cuts.

There is a real result to the tax cuts. Last year we had the largest deficit in the history of the United States. We borrowed hundreds of billions of dollars and we are going to hand the bill only to people who work for wages and salary, who generally earn less than $100,000 a year, and to their kids and grandkids.

The wealthy should not pay any portion of that in their version of America because they are the wealth generators. The fourth increase in the national debt since George Bush took office; 60 percent increase in the national debt. That is the result of their tax cut policies.

And wages, they have not budged: 99 percent of the people in America working for wages and salaries saw their real incomes decline last year. One percent did well, those $300,000 and up, and $1.3 million and up, they did great. And those are the folks they were having lunch with when they heard how great the economy is in America. I wonder who picked up the tab.

Mr. Speaker, for more than a decade I have been expressing concern about our ports and our port security. Let me explain.

The United States has signed onto international agreements, consensus agreements, where we allow ships to be owned secretly and flagged under flags of convenience from countries that barely exist, Liberia, other countries, like Malta and Panama, who look at it as a way to make money, but care nothing about safety and security. And even they will freely admit they do not know who owns these ships.

Osama bin Laden may own a fleet of freighters. We are not allowed to know that, but they can sail into a U.S. port under a Liberian, Panamanian, or Maltese flag. That is a concern. We do not know who the crews are on these ships.

After an accident on my coast, where I started investigating the credentials of the Filipino captain, I found out that at an International Maritime Organization-approved school in the Philippines, which has never been visited or inspected, which does not exist; anybody, any terrorist, anybody, can buy captain's papers for about $2,500 and they are a captain. So if Osama bin Laden owns a ship, a terrorist buys fake papers, he is now a captain on that ship.

Well, but there must be measures to secure the cargo. Well, not really. We require a manifest, a piece of paper, or in this day and age, an electronic transmission of a list of what is in the containers on that ship.

Now, that is pretty hard to phony up. But then they put these little seals on there that a 6-year-old kid could peel off and open up if the container has been inspected. It would be too expensive, $1 to $2 per container, to have tamper-proof seals. So we cannot have tamper-proof seals. So we do not know who owns the ships. We do not know who crews the ships, and we do not know what is on the cargo on those ships that are coming into U.S. waters.

Then we have the ``thin blue line,'' the United States Coast Guard. Here are the concerns they raised about this UAE deal: The Coast Guard said, ``There are many intelligence gaps concerning the potential for DPW or PNO assets to support terrorist operations that preclude the completion of a thorough threat assessment. The breadth of the intelligence gaps also infer potential unknown threats against a large number of potential vulnerabilities.''

But then, when they were backed into a corner and their funding was probably threatened by the White House, the Coast Guard said, ``The DP World's acquisition of PNO in and of itself does not pose a significant threat to U.S. assets in ports in the continental United States.'' Notice the qualification. ``In and of itself.''

The Coast Guard knows that we do not know who owns the ships. The Coast Guard knows that we do not know who crews those ships. The Coast Guard knows that we do not know what is on those ships. So they are saying this is another level of concern, this government which supported the Taliban, Mr. Khan and his nuclear proliferation, actually controlling the physical facilities. If all that other stuff was taken care of, if we knew who owned the ships, if we knew who crewed the ships, if we knew exactly what was on the ships, if it was tamper-proof sealed, then maybe you could think about this.

Now, the President says he did not know a thing about it, but he knows it was absolutely fine because all his people took care of it. You would think that that might have included the Secretary of Defense. He says he did not know a thing about it, but he knows it is just fine too. And now they say, well, we will have a review for 45 days, but we know it is just fine. We just need that time to tell people it is just fine.

This is plain and simple the Bush administration once more putting commerce, putting multinational corporate profits ahead of the safety and security of the American people. This is about a free trade deal they are negotiating with the UAE. This is about our huge and growing trade deficit where more and more foreign countries are going to be coming back here, buying up critical assets in the United States of America, because we have a totally failed trade policy under this administration.

And what do they want to do? They want to do more of it, and now they want to allow people to buy terminals in our ports and jeopardize the security of the American people.

Enough is enough. It is time to stop this madness.

Mr. Speaker, the Medicare part D plan is getting some rave reviews. You might be surprised to hear a Democrat say that; but, yes, it is: Rave reviews from the CEOs of pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies and a few political hacks downtown appointed by President Bush.

But from seniors, there is incredible confusion; and if they find their way through this myriad of confusing plans and find one that provides the drugs they need, they find now there is a new barrier. These are the most restrictive insurance products in history in terms of prior approval for needed drugs.

One company has 39 different forms, which its CEO denied until he was shown them. Then he said, Oh, yes, that is right, I guess we do. They require doctors to conduct all sorts of tests for drugs that seniors have been taking for years to prove that they really need them. And even then if you get a plan that lets you through and does give you your drugs, they can change that benefit on a weekly basis, but seniors cannot change plans on a weekly basis.

And then there is the doughnut hole. I had my first constituent call about the doughnut hole. She has exhausted her benefits. She is on Social Security disability, and she has to pay $2,850 out of pocket for drugs to stay alive. She does not have $2,850.

Medicare part D. Now, with great fanfare in the dark of the night, this Congress passed this plan, a plan written by and for the pharmaceutical industry. The pharmaceutical industry is the number one beneficiary. According to some academics, it should raise their profits by 28 percent over the next 5 years, not bad for the pharmaceutical industry.

Some forget history. The first time this bill came up on the floor of the House, it was being hotly debated, and then suddenly at 5 o'clock the House had to adjourn. Why did the House have to adjourn? Because the Republicans were going downtown to have their huge annual fundraiser, and a number of the principal fund-raisers were from the pharmaceutical industry. They are very, very generous to those who benefit them.

The pharmaceutical industry does really well. The insurance industry gets subsidies to offer these plans, even though they say that these are going to be great plans. They are getting subsidies to offer them. Still, seniors aren't lining up in great numbers for the plans because they are unbelievably complex plans.

Now, there are a number of problems that have come to our attention recently. In fact, even the chairman of Walgreen's, no lefty Democratic institution there, said that the government needs to intervene because the multiplicity of plans is just so unbelievable that people cannot understand them. Even worse than that, these plans are the most restrictive insurance product in history for requiring prior approval and testing before drugs are approved.

When the CEO of Coventry Health Care was contacted regarding the 39 different forms with multiple procedures the physicians would have to access in order to give drugs with prior approval to seniors, he said that could not be true. He checked, he came back, and he said it was true. He said, for instance, there are things like Accutane which could cause birth defects.

I know that we are pushing the boundaries of science, but I don't think too many 65-and-over American women eligible for Medicare have to worry about that. There are some other disorders for which Accutane can be a very helpful and legitimate treatment.

What they are doing is, first off, you have to buy into a plan. They can change the benefits weekly. Even if you took that plan because it offers the drugs you need on a weekly basis, the insurance industry can change it. Then even if they keep those drugs available, they are going to require that your doctor and you jump through incredible hoops to get prior approval.

Even seniors in nursing homes who have been on drugs for 10 and 15 years with a very well-known and documented condition, their doctors are being required to order expensive tests to justify continuing prescriptions for those seniors; and in some cases prescriptions have been interrupted, jeopardizing the patients.

This is a plan that wasn't set up to be convenient or easy for seniors to use to provide a meaningful benefit. It was set up first to benefit the pharmaceutical industry, then the insurance industry. The plausible excuse for that is to provide some coverage for seniors, coverage which, by the way, is going to cost taxpayers $800 billion.

Because, guess what, the bill, as written by the pharmaceutical industry, and passed by the Republican Congress and signed by the President, says that the Federal Government is outlawed, outlawed, from negotiating lower drug prices for seniors. That is prohibited by Federal law, despite the fact that the VA does it, and recent studies show that the VA is acquiring drugs between 40 and 80 percent cheaper than are being offered under these plans to our seniors.

The pharmaceutical industry said it would not be fair if the government negotiated lower drug prices for everybody on Medicare. It would not be fair to do that.

Come on, the most profitable industry consistently in the world, and they say that would not be fair; the industry that is gouging profits out of Americans, while selling drugs for half or a third the price overseas, and then crying all the way to the bank, when seniors here have to pay three and four times as much for those particular drugs.

What would be fair is to have the government negotiate lower drug prices for everybody eligible for Medicare. You can walk in. You do not have to have any insurance; you are going to get that big discount. Then the government could offer a simple plan, one plan, that would give benefits to cover that additional cost, and they could do that on a sliding scale basis.

We could save, over the next 5 years, the taxpayers of the United States $600 billion and provide a more meaningful benefit to all our seniors than this plan is doing. But we will not do that here, because the seniors aren't big campaign contributors like the pharmaceutical and insurance industries. Hopefully, there will be a revolt among America's seniors, and they will demand we change this plan, do something meaningful and save the Treasury $600 billion.

Well, the gentlewoman was energized in talking to her constituents and encouraged by it, but I guess she didn't talk to any seniors about Medicare part D.

I have the unfortunate privilege of probably representing the first victim in the United States of America of the so-called donut hole. You don't know what the donut hole is? They wanted to pretend that you could preclude Medicare from negotiating lower drug prices, subsidize the pharmaceutical and insurance industries, and do all this for $400 billion. Of course, it turns out it will be more like $800 billion; but in order to get there, they had to create this weird construct. After you pay your payments, your premiums, and all that, you get to a certain point, around $2,000 or so, where you have to pay everything for the next $2,850.

This constituent doesn't have $2,850. The pharmaceutical companies eliminated the compassionate drug programs because they said, hey, these people can get this great Federal benefit. This means, in all likelihood, if we can't get this woman some help, she will die. Medicare part D. I guess she didn't talk to her constituents about that.

Mr. Speaker, 3:10 a.m. The Republicans do all their best worst work at this time in the dark of night.

Well, they have done a new thing here. They have bifurcated Santa Claus. We have two Santa Clauses. We have Santa thief who is going to wriggle down the chimney and he is going to steal from the least among us. He is going to take $16 billion out of student loans, kids struggling to get ahead. Why? So we can finance tax cuts on dividend paying stocks.

He is going to take money from struggling families in the form of Medicaid, seniors on Medicare. Oh, he is going to give another $1 billion to the LIHEAP program, thank you to Santa thief.

He has also given $9 billion in subsidies to the oil, coal and gas industry in the so-called travesty of an energy bill that passed this House.

But that old St. Nick, he is still alive, thank God. Republicans have kept him alive, but he is in the Bahamas with the expatriate people who are avoiding taxes, clinking champagne glasses, hopefully not French, owing to the sensibilities of the Republicans here and those French, and he is giving them wonderful benefits.

We are going to reduce taxes on people who earn over $300,000 a year so their tax rate on dividends or capital gains is less than the tax rate paid by the checkout clerk at the supermarket. Now, that is fair. That is equitable. By God, because those people are going to trickle down on the rest of America, as they trickle we are actually creating a sea of red ink and their yachts float higher and their mansions get bigger. A few lucky folks will get to wash the decks of the yachts and to cut their lawns.

Now, this is what the Republicans say. We do not have a revenue problem. We are hemorrhaging revenue. If we just restored the tax rates of the booming 1990s, when the wealthy were doing quite well, the yachts and mansions and increasing incomes, we would gain $386 billion if they just paid the same rate of taxes they did before you took over everything.

That is 10 times the cuts here, 10 times what Santa thief is stealing from the students, the old folks and the poor, 10 times as much. We do not have a revenue problem. No, your contributor wealthy investor class is doing very well. They just have to wait until next year for their gratification, but we are going to stick it to the most suffering among us here early this morning.

Mr. Chairman, our Nation has long been a beacon for the dispossessed and downtrodden around the world who come to our shores for a shot at achieving financial security, personal security, and to fulfill their human potential, the very essence of the American dream. Our Nation was built on the sweat and ingenuity of immigrants. My father's side emigrated from Italy, and my mother's side came from Ireland. We should be proud of this heritage.

However, a nation that does not have control over its own borders is a nation that cannot claim to be sovereign. We need to know who is coming into our country, and we need to be able to keep out those who are not authorized to enter. The status quo, with 500,000 or more individuals entering the U.S. illegally every year, including untold numbers from countries of concern, meaning countries in which radical Islamic terrorists are prevalent, is not acceptable.

Prior efforts by Congress to control and rationalize immigration, including the reforms enacted in 1986 and 1996, have failed. One of the primary reasons these reforms have failed to stop the flow of undocumented workers and the exploitation of immigrant labor is the lack of meaningful employer sanctions. I believe the crux of the legislation under consideration today, in addition to enhanced border security provisions, such as more agents, improved technology, and cracking down on document fraud, is that for the first time Congress is imposing tough employer sanctions, which will decrease the incentive to exploit immigrant labor. H.R. 4437 would double the fines for employers who hire undocumented workers to a minimum of $5,000 for a first offense and up to $40,000 for subsequent offenses. H.R. 4437 would also require employers to verify an applicant's eligibility for lawful employment with immigration and Social Security officials.

These enhanced employer verification provisions are one of the reasons why the powerful business lobbies like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, some of whose members regularly hire low-wage exploitable immigrant labor, are opposing the bill, but also one of the reasons why I support it.

Many business and immigrant rights organizations, along with some in organized labor, have raised the concern that H.R. 4437 does not include guest worker provisions.

I have serious reservations about the guest worker proposals that have been proposed by the President and in various bills in Congress. Very little has changed with respect to guest worker programs since I came to Congress. They continue to be a source of worker exploitation. When I was first elected, I fought a small group of government contractors in the forestry and reforestation industries who were abusing their workers. A recent series in the Sacramento Bee newspaper documented that abuse of immigrant labor continues to be widespread in guest worker forestry programs. The new guest worker proposals are unlikely to improve that situation.

Guest-worker programs have also historically been used to break unions. The meatpacking industry is a prime example. The meatpacking industry broke the unions by bringing in low-wage immigrant labor. Once the union was broken, the industry cut wages and benefits for the immigrant workers, sped up conveyer belts, and just generally made working conditions miserable. The rate of worker injuries and workplace accidents are extraordinarily high. It's taken the industry back to the days described in Upton Sinclair's book The Jungle.

I am wary of the impact on low-income Americans and low-wage legal immigrants from guest-worker proposals. Such proposals threaten to increase the low-wage labor pool in the U.S. by millions of workers, further eroding the pay rates and working conditions of tens of millions of Americans and legal immigrants. The nearly 20 percent of Americans without a high-school degree will be particularly hard hit. Under the leading guest-worker program in Congress, the number of unskilled workers authorized to enter every year would be 400,000. In addition, 290,000 higher skilled workers would be allowed in every year, nearly double the number in current law.

The Commission on Immigration Reform, created in 1995 by President Bill Clinton and headed by former Democratic Member of Congress Barbara Jordan, reported, ``Guest-worker programs have depressed wages'' and reduced employment opportunities for ``unskilled American workers, including recent immigrants,'' who can be easily ``displaced by newly entering guest workers.''

A study by Harvard University professor George Borjas shows wages for Americans dropped 9 percent for high school graduates and 5 percent for college graduates in the wake of the unprecedented migration of undocumented immigrants in the 1980s and 1990s. Other studies, including research by the National Research Council and the Economic Policy Institute, show immigrants under ``guest'' worker programs are paid 15-33 percent less than American citizens, driving down wages for all workers.

I am also concerned that the administrative burden created by guest- worker programs will disadvantage immigrants from around the world who are now waiting in line for their paperwork to be processed so they can enter the U.S. legally. Though they have complied with the law, filed all the required applications, provided all the needed documentation, and paid all the fees, it will be years before they have legal status. My staff and I devote countless hours every week to the plight of frustrated legal immigrant husbands, wives, mothers and fathers, and children trying to navigate the immigration maze. Families are separated for years and years going the legal route, and immigrants from the Philippines and Mexico often have to wait at least a decade to be approved with no chance to jump to the head of the line.

H.R. 4437 is not a perfect bill. Far from it. Immigrant rights organizations, labor unions and others have rightfully pointed out that the bill does not in any way address the 10-12 million undocumented workers already in the U.S., no matter how long they've been here or how much they've contributed to their local community or the economy. I am concerned that the alien smuggling provisions are written in an overly broad way that could penalize the everyday actions of social service organizations, churches, and others who may provide humanitarian aid and counsel to immigrants. Further, a dubious amendment was adopted during consideration on the floor that requires the construction of $2.2 billion worth of fences along a part of the southern border, which, as evidenced by the failure of similar fences in Spain and along the Hong Kong-China border, will do little or nothing to combat illegal immigration, but will certainly divert money from programs that could. Instead, this money could be spent to hire and equip 2,000 additional agents for 10 years and to improve technologies used to protect the border.

We need to move this complex and emotional debate on border security and immigration reform forward. Although H.R. 4437 is flawed, I am voting in favor of the bill because it contains a number of provisions that I support related to border security; because this is the only immigration legislation the Republican leadership will bring to the floor, meaning it is the only opportunity I will have to go on record in favor of enhancing border security; and because I expect that the Senate will address the major deficiencies in the bill. Immigration will be debated again in the House next year after the Senate has worked through its own version of immigration reform and border security legislation and a conference committee has met and resolved the differences between the two chambers bills. I will reserve judgment on whether to support the final bill until I see the details.

Mr. Speaker, well, the Christmas tree is lit and decorated on the west front of the Capitol; but meanwhile here in the House Chamber, the Republican elves are toiling on the gifts to be put under the tree for the American people.

For the wealthiest, the investors who earn over $300,000 a year, fabulous gifts, huge new extensions of tax cuts. Unfortunately for seniors, working families, and the poor, there is nothing but a box of rhetoric. They even have to forego the usual lump of coal because it is too expensive with the Bush failed energy policy.

Even worse, the tax cut for the wealthiest among us, those who earn over $300,000 a year, will be paid for by cuts in student financial, food and nutrition assistance, school lunches, Medicaid care for poor people. The list kind of goes on and on. Merry Christmas.

Mr. Speaker, once again, the House Republican leadership refuses to allow an honest debate over the future of the U.S. military presence in Iraq. The American people, and in particularly our men and women in uniform serving honorably in difficult circumstances in Iraq, deserve more than cheerleading and sloganeering by Congress and the President. Unfortunately, empty gestures are all this Congress provides with this resolution.

Like all of my colleagues in Congress, I was heartened when millions of Iraqis, even at risk of life and limb, voted in late January to establish an interim government and constitutional assembly and again in October in support of a new Constitution. And, the early reporting on yesterday's election for a new four-year parliament in Iraq has been positive. There has been progress in Iraq. I congratulate the Iraqis on the election, and I commend our troops for helping to provide security for the election.

Unfortunately, I cannot support the resolution on the floor today because it contains the blatantly false assertion that negotiating a time line for withdrawal of U.S. forces with the Iraqi government is somehow inconsistent with achieving victory in Iraq. To the contrary, I believe that negotiating a timeline for withdrawal of U.S. forces is a prerequisite for stabilizing Iraq and bringing our troops home with honor beginning early next year.

Announcing the termination of the open-ended U.S. military commitment in Iraq and providing a concrete plan, including a timeline negotiated with the Iraqi government, for withdrawal could well undermine support for insurgents. The majority of insurgent fighters are Iraqi Sunnis who have stoked the wide variety of grievances of ordinary Iraqis arising from the U.S. military presence to generate popular support for their cause. Most importantly, establishing a withdrawal plan and timeline would remove one of the chief causes of instability in Iraq, the U.S. military presence itself, by separating nationalist Iraqi insurgents trying to end the U.S. military presence, both Sunni and Shia, from foreign elements in Iraq for their own reasons. As, the Commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, General George Casey, testified to Congress earlier this year that ``the perception of occupation in Iraq is a major driving force behind the insurgency.'' A specific withdrawal plan, with benchmarks for measuring success in stabilizing Iraq, could turn Iraqis, both Sunni and Shia, against the foreign terrorists operating in Iraq. This could be a key turning point in stabilizing the country.

A time line and withdrawal plan negotiated with the Iraqi government would also boost the Iraqi government's legitimacy and claim to self- rule, and force the Iraqi government to take responsibility for itself and its citizens. Negotiating a withdrawal timeline and strategy with the Iraqi government could, more than possibly anything else, improve the standing of the Iraqi government in the eyes of its own people, a significant achievement in a region in which the standing of rulers and governments is generally low.

Similarly, establishing a firm timeline for withdrawal could accelerate the development of Iraqi security forces and deepen their commitment to defending their own country and their own government. It would eliminate the conflict they now feel by working with what many of them see as an occupying force. It would allow them to defend a sovereign Iraqi government, rather than fight alongside U.S. forces. As long as the U.S. military remains in Iraq, Iraqi politicians and security forces will use it as a crutch and will likely fail to take the necessary steps to settle their differences and establish an effective, inclusive and independent government.

Negotiating a timeline for withdrawal with the newly elected Iraqi government would show that democracy ended the U.S. occupation of Iraq, not terrorist or insurgent violence, and would allow our troops to come home with honor.

Just as importantly, a specific plan and timeline for withdrawal would provide much needed relief to over-burdened military personnel and their families and provide some certainty to U.S. taxpayers regarding the financial burden they'll be forced to bear.

Finally, a plan for withdrawal could also help the United States in our broader fight against Islamic extremists with global ambitions, most notably al-Qaeda, by taking away a recruiting tool and training ground. Porter Goss, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, testified to Congress that, ``Islamic extremists are exploiting the Iraqi conflict to recruit new anti-U.S. jihadists. These jihadists who survive will leave Iraq experienced and focused on acts of urban terrorism.'' He went on to say, ``The Iraq conflict, while not a cause of extremism, has become a cause for extremists.''

The House should be debating this important issue and strategies for moving forward in Iraq instead of politically motivated misleading resolutions.

Madam Chairman, certainly there is a better way to engender diversity. We could perhaps reallocate these visas to the families of those who have won the lottery previously who have become good citizens.

But the point is, does America want to have a lottery to get the best, the most skilled people from around the world or the most diverse people from around the world? And I think not.

It has been subject to fraud. My office every day deals with people whose families have been waiting 5, 6, 7, 8 years patiently in line around the world to come here from the Philippines, from Mexico, from India and other countries. Should they get bumped to the back while some random person comes first? I think not.

Mr. Speaker, earlier tonight, I was asked by a reporter if perhaps I and other Members were upset that this close to Christmas and on a weekend night that the House was still working and the year was dragging on. And I said, no, that did not bother me a bit; I would be happy to work all night and through the holidays. But what bothered me was the substance of what we are working on and why we are still here.

It can be distilled down to three simple reasons: We are here because the Republicans have a package of mean-spirited cuts they want to make just before Christmas. They want to hack $14 billion out of student financial aid; billions of dollars out of food assistance, school lunch, food stamps; dump the Medicaid burden for underinsured or uninsured people back onto the States; cut foster care; and cut long- term care. And they say they have to do that because of the deficit.

But then they have bated it with tax cuts for the wealthy. That is the present they want to put under the tree before we leave. They want to push through, after the $50 billion in cuts in student financial aid, food assistance, medical assistance, foster care and long-term care, they want to give tax cuts to the wealthiest among us.

Disproportionately, their cuts will go to people who invest for a living and earn over $300,000 a year. They have a theory that values investors over wage and salary earners. It is called trickle-down economics. What they say is, if we enrich those people, those who earn over $300,000 a year, particularly those who earn over $1 million a year, if we give them more tax cuts and if we borrow money to give them tax cuts, they will trickle down on the rest of America and put people to work. They will float their yachts on a sea of red ink, and they will hire people to wash the yachts and cut the lawn, and therefore, America benefits.

Unfortunately, they would increase the deficit even after their mean- spirited cuts. So that is their pre-Christmas agenda: To stick it to the working families and the struggling and the young in America so that the wealthiest among us, who are already doing quite well, will have yet a merrier Christmas.

And then they have one last thing: They want to drill in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge. The entire Congress is being held captive by one Senator from Alaska. He is going to stick that on one bill or another before he lets Congress go home.

Substitute for a comprehensive energy policy for the United States of America, something that might free us from the oil companies and OPEC, something that might break through into the 21st century in terms of new technologies, they want to push through drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge.

So that is their troika: Cuts to Americans in need and Americans trying to make better of their lives; tax cuts for those who are already doing phenomenally well; and then, finally, yet another gift to the oil industry, on top of the subsidies they provided in the energy bill.

It is a pretty sad policy, but perhaps they will at least give a lump of coal to every American to put in the fireplace to try to keep warm because they cannot afford their natural gas or electric heat or their oil for their furnace this year.

Madam Speaker, well, the Bush administration set yet another record yesterday. Congratulations to the Bush administration. We set the highest 1-month trade deficit in the history of the United States, eclipsing the highest deficit figure previous record which was set last month.

We are headed toward a $718 billion trade deficit this year. We are borrowing $2 billion a day from people overseas to buy things made overseas that used to be made here, and they keep standing up on that side of the aisle and saying what is wrong with Americans, can't they see the economy is booming? Yes, it is booming, we are borrowing money overseas to buy goods overseas, and that makes it look like a booming economy while people are losing their jobs here in America, 3 million manufacturing jobs left, and these trade policies are driving down wages in this country.

That is their idea of a successful economy, because the CEOs and a few investors are doing really well. It is a disaster. No more record trade deficits. We need a new trade policy for this country.

Mr. Chairman, they are proposing here to build an extensive triple-wall fence along the Mexican border, ostensibly building on the success of a very short section of fence, and they are also proposing that we should study building a fence along the entire 2,000-plus-mile Canadian border. They are not talking much about that.

Here is a picture of one of the world's existing fences that completely surrounds an area. It is in Melilla; and like Ceuta, which is attempting to keep Africans from getting into the Spanish parts of Morocco, they do not work.

The EU paid for these double fences. They use deadly force. They kill people there, and people still go over it, around it, and through it. It is 10 feet high with concertina wire on top. They will make it 20 feet high with concertina wire on top. It does not work.

When Hong Kong was walled off by the Communist Chinese, again, a fairly extensive piece of land, and they could use deadly force, businesses were set up on the Communist Chinese side of the border, the entrepreneurs there, to guarantee to get people through in less than a minute. And they did. And it did not work.

They say it is only $2.2 billion. We could do a lot more with $2.2 billion. We could do some interior enforcement to keep illegal people from working here. We could hire more Border Patrol agents. There are a lot of things we could do with $2.2 billion, but to build or extend this fence, yeah, it will make someone rich like Bechtel or Halliburton or whoever is going to build the fence, they will get a pile of money out of it; but it is not going to work. It does not work in Africa. It did not work in Communist China, again, where they are using deadly force. Are we going to use deadly force?

How about some enforcement on the Mexican side of the border? Well, they do not want to go there because they all voted for NAFTA. They do not want to say let us withdraw from NAFTA unless the Mexicans put enforcement on their side of the border. Right now people line up on the border at night and the Mexican police say, hi, how you doing? Okay. And then they run across.

How about a little bit of international cooperation? There are a lot of things we could do here, but the things we could do that are effective offend big business who are the patrons of the Republican Party. That is interior enforcement, employer enforcement. People do not come here to go on vacation. They come here to go to work. If they could not get work, they would not sneak across the border. If we force the Mexican Government to do something on their side by threatening to withdraw from NAFTA, which we can do with 6 months' notice, again, big business would not allow the Republicans to do that or George Bush certainly would not do it because he is for open borders. But they can pretend here they are doing something.

They are wasting $2.2 billion of taxpayer money to do something that has not worked anywhere else in the world even where they are willing to shoot the people that go through the fence, Communist China, Morocco. It is not going to work here either.

And what about Canada? Come on, guys, talk about the Canada part. Tell us about the 2,000-plus-mile fence along the Canadian border. That is going to be a real piece of work.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

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

Hopefully, this will be a relatively noncontroversial amendment, unlike the preceding.

We are doing something nonsensical today. We have, post-9/11, required that manifests be submitted to the United States of America to our law enforcement intelligence authorities for incoming flights for all passengers on board. That is good. That was only voluntarily before 9/11.

Unfortunately, we do not require that this be done until the flight has left, and we have all seen that a number of times flights have been turned back. They have had to land in Canada or Maine. People have had to be off-loaded. It would be a lot more sensible to have a program where we could vet the manifest before the plane leaves.

So this amendment would set up a pilot program. The technology exists. It is being done in Australia and elsewhere very successfully, to have a pilot program so that we could show that this will work so that we can both make America more secure and facilitate international air travel.

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

Mr. Chairman, the chairman has spoken so eloquently that I don't think I can improve upon that.

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