Floor Statements

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. I rise here in support of the Social Security system and concerns about its looming revenue shortfalls.

We heard from the esteemed chairman that this would only cost $500 million over 5 years. Now, the GAO says that that is not at all an accurate estimate. In fact, they said, the actions the Bush administration ``took to assess the integrity and compatibility of Mexico's Social Security system were limited and neither transparent nor well-documented. The administration provided no information showing it assessed the reliability of Mexican earnings data and the internal controls used to ensure the integrity of information that the Social Security Administration will rely on to pay Social Security benefits.''

In other words, the agreement could be setting the stage for massive fraud.

Mr. Chairman, $500 million is a lot of money around here. We have pitched battles over tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, a few million, and to just dismiss this and say, well, $500 million. And then the point that, well, the House has to approve it. Well, if this was going to come to the House for an up-or-down vote for certain, and if we had to approve it before it became binding for all time on the people of the United States and our Social Security system, that would be one thing. This is under an upside down, backwards procedure that says, we can only vote if we are allowed to vote on a resolution of disapproval. There is no guarantee that such a resolution will be brought forward and no way to guarantee that.

So the question becomes will we take something the GAO has assessed as being on faulty data, poorly negotiated, with low-ball estimates on the cost, and just hope that we get to vote on it before it becomes binding, before it costs Social Security perhaps $1 billion over 5 years? We do not really know what it will cost. But with the looming shortfalls with Social Security, I do not believe we can take that risk.

We should go back to the drawing board. This should be done in a transparent manner. It should be done with good data. And then it should be brought forward with an assurance that we will get to vote up or down.

Mr. Speaker, $422 billion: a new record deficit for the United States of America, yet another record for the Bush administration, eclipsing last year's record of $375 billion. But only inside the Washington Beltway or inside the Bush White House is this considered proof positive that his economic policies are working.

Working how? We are going to spend every penny of the Social Security surplus and replace it with IOUs. We are going to finance the entire Government of the United States outside the Department of Defense with borrowed money. We are going to add 10 percent to the national debt in one year, indebting another generation and a generation after that to work to pay off this profligate spending.

They say their policies are working. Working how? For whom? The very few wealthy people who have reaped the benefit of the huge tax cuts, while the rest of America is being given the tab.

Mr. Speaker, well, the Republicans can try and dredge up the ghosts of administrations past, but this commission report released this morning says that both the Clinton and Bush administrations are equally culpable in 9/11. What they say is there is an ongoing failure. The greatest failure is of our intelligence agencies and law enforcement agencies to share information.

They say no matter how much money you dump into the intelligence agencies, they are going to continue to fail because of the culture of keeping their own information. They say we need to establish a new way of sharing information among those agencies.

The gigantic bureaucracy of the Department of Homeland Security, written on the back of a napkin by Karl Rove at the White House, did not get there because it excluded the intelligence agencies who failed the United States of America. Nothing has been done about this ongoing failing to integrate the information. They put out something called the TTIC, the Terrorist Threat Information Center. Guess what? They send low-level people there on short details and they do not share. They are like 3-year-olds about billion dollar budgets.

They have the information to make this country safe. It is time for this Congress and this administration to take the steps we need that are outlined in this report. Forget about Sandy Berger and a bunch of other B.S.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize and congratulate the City of Cottage Grove, Oregon. Located in my congressional district at the southern end of the beautiful Willamette Valley, Cottage Grove recently won its second All-American City award.

The Kalapuya Indians first enjoyed the riches of the southern valley, and the Oregon Trail opened the territory to other settlers in 1848. In 1863, gold was discovered in the mountains south of Cottage Grove, and mining activities continued into the 1920s, when the lumber industry became the economic engine. The City celebrates its exciting history every summer during Bohemia Mining Days. Today, this community of not quite 9,000 is blessed with a wealth of community spirit and ``can do'' attitude.

Cottage Grove is a vital community dedicated to possibilities. This town is not afraid to take and share responsibility for creating a better future. In fact, in Cottage Grove there is a strong sense of obligation to making dreams come true. The 1968 and 2004 All-American City Awards honor the community's commitment to excellence, cooperation, and creativity.

Only ten communities earn All-American City status each year nationwide. Cottage Grove is being saluted for a variety of accomplishments and three major projects--the new Cottage Grove Community Hospital, the formation of the Economic & Business Improvement District, and the recently completed Cottage Grove High School facility.

American anthropologist Margaret Mead once said, ``Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.'' Cottage Grove embodies this great notion, with friends, neighbors, government, businesses, and service agencies working together to get things done, and done well.

I am proud to represent Cottage Grove, and thank you for the opportunity to highlight ``the little city that could.''

Mr. Speaker, well, today we finally have the 9/11 Commission report; but unfortunately on the other side of the aisle, they want to focus on Sandy Berger, a former high-ranking official in the Clinton administration and his transgressions, whatever they might be. Whatever they might be, they did not kill 3,000 people. They did not destroy the World Trade Center. They did not attack the Pentagon, the United States of America, attempted to attack the Capitol and the White House, and he is not planning another attack on the United States of America, unlike al Qaeda, who is still out there planning another attack.

In fact, we have heard from the head of homeland security. It is an imminent threat of attack that will happen sometime between now and the election. And this report points to the fact that we have not taken the steps necessary to utilize and better utilize the resources of the Government of the United States of America to forestall that attack.

Now, remember, a number of us on this side of the aisle called for a Cabinet-level position to coordinate intelligence on the head of the homeland security. The President said no; but after public opinion moved against him, finally they threw out a proposal, just about 2 years ago today.

And 2 years ago today they threw out this proposal, full-blown from the basement of the White House, to create a 270,000-person bureaucracy that would be the Department of Homeland Security; but curiously enough, it did not go to the issues raised in this report, which is it did not touch the intelligence agencies, the CIA, all the intelligence agencies at the Defense Department. They were excluded from Homeland Security. It did not go to the FBI, who failed to coordinate and get the information and share information with the CIA and let people into the country who were on a terrorist watch list, but we let them into the country with visas who were some of the perpetrators of this attack.

They say we need to make major structural changes to address those deficiencies. We have not made them. The Department of Homeland Security did not do it. We created this little weeny thing called the TTIC, Terrorist Threat Information Center, where the various agencies sent over short-term detailees who have no authority, who are supposed to share; but they still do not share. They do not like to share. We have multibillion dollar intelligence agencies, and they are like 3- year-olds. It is mine; it is mine. They do not want to share. Unfortunately, people die when they do not share, and we need to break down that culture.

Now they want to go back and blame Berger and the Clinton administration. This report says both the Clinton administration, the Clinton administration and the Bush administration are to blame, but that is history. What are we going to do today to adopt the recommendations of this report? Because they say the problems are ongoing. They are ongoing. They are still not sharing. We are still not coordinating. We are not defending ourselves to the best of our ability. They make two recommendations, a national counterterrorism center. Great idea, seems like to me. And a national intelligence director, who would be appointed by the President, based in the White House, with a large staff and would have the authority to make the intelligence agencies and the FBI share. No more 3-year-olds saying mine, mine, you cannot have it, but make them share in a meaningful way.

Put together the pieces of the puzzle. They point out here we had 10 pieces of the puzzle, but we failed to put it together. We cannot fail again, but they are saying we will. This is a nonpartisan report, unanimous by Republicans and Democrats alike. Most former elected officials, Governors, Senators, Members of Congress. This should not be politicized.

Let us not waste time down here talking about Sandy Berger. Maybe he committed a crime, maybe. Maybe he did not. Fine. They are investigating, put him in jail if he committed the crime. That is not the point. The point is there is someone out there planning an attack on the United States today which has nothing to do with what that guy might have done or not done, but it has a lot to do with what we have not done here with the inadequacies of the Homeland Security Department that we adopted 2 years ago that are ongoing.

It is all in this report. I urge people to get a copy, to read it and to demand that their Members of Congress, their Senators take meaningful action in the near future.

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

I thank the gentleman from Florida for his leadership on this issue. He has raised this issue persistently, both in closed and open settings, with any and all officials who might be able to help us begin to deal more effectively with this growing threat.

I also want to thank the gentleman from New York, whom we will hear from in just a few moments, for his leadership and persistence on this issue.

Many Americans are not particularly aware of this threat. We are talking about a threat that can be transported in something not much bigger than a golf bag, and in fact, some of the earlier versions of this weapon are available on the black market for not much more than a cheap set of golf clubs, not even a stand-up set of Calloways, but much less expensive clubs. So the proliferation, the availability, the portability, the concealability of these weapons is a major threat.

We go on from there to the fact that they have been utilized more times than many would know. Over the last 25 years, it is estimated there have been, as mentioned, as many as 35 attempts to shoot down civilian aircraft resulting in the loss of 24 aircraft and 500 deaths, something again little known to most Americans and members of the flying public worldwide.

Last November, a DHL Airbus A300 was severely damaged over Baghdad, actually losing hydraulics and flight controls after being hit by a missile. Having visited Iraq, where I was flown in on a propeller plane because they have less of a heat signature than a jet and having done the spiral-down over Baghdad, and that is an experience that all of our troops who have not come in by land have had in being deployed to Baghdad, one realizes the magnitude of this threat.

The war has unleashed hundreds more of these missiles onto the black market in Iraq and the Middle East. Our friends, the Chinese, are counterfeiting some of the most effective and efficient versions of this missile produced by the Russians and the United States of America. As they are so good at counterfeiting, the Chinese have counterfeited them, and as usual, they are proliferating them into very uncontrolled and potentially problematic markets to clients who might use these in ways that are inimical to commercial aviation worldwide.

So there is a real and growing threat. There is no simple solution. The technology that is being utilized by the military can be quite effective. It is not technology that is immediately transferrable to civilian aircraft, and the chairman has tried to deal with that in two different ways: one, with the development and testing of defensive systems; the other with the mandate that when systems do become available and viable that the FAA not take its usual 3 to 5 years to certify them, but in fact, that these be expedited on a basis far quicker than most technologies are certified by the FAA so they could become available to commercial aviation.

The chairman has already raised the issue of buy-backs, particularly for the older versions of these missiles, not the new Chinese counterfeits, but the others. They could be bought for very little on the market, and that would be a wise way to begin to deal with the proliferation.

International agreements, like other agreements, land mines, which unfortunately neither the Clinton administration nor the Bush administration has been willing to sign onto, but modeled on other international agreements, we could begin to rein in the proliferation of these weapons and their availability. Perhaps we could even get the attention of the Chinese for once, so that they would not be proliferating them.

The other issue, as I said earlier, is that we need to continue to research new measures. This is not the only threat to civilian aviation, which both the chairman and I recognize. We are very worried about the threat of explosives that are carried or smuggled on

board airplanes, and there is much more that needs to be done there, which we have covered in a number of hearings and it is not appropriate to go into at this point in time. But this is yet another part of the threat which cannot be ignored.

I, again, appreciate the chairman's leadership on this issue.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Israel), who has been a leader on this issue; and it was his efforts, in good part, that have led us here this evening.

Mr. Speaker, I urge the House to adopt this measure.

Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California for his time and the gentlewoman from California for her excellent work on this legislation.

To echo the words of the gentleman from Indiana who preceded me in the well, this is a good step but it is not an adequate step. I would differ only in that he said we need more laws. We do not need more laws. We need to enforce the existing laws.

I was one who voted against Permanent Most Favored Nation status for China because I thought the only leverage we had over them to stop them from this piracy was the annual renewal of that trade status. The argument of the prevailing side was, well, now they will be in the WTO and they will have to follow the rules; and in fact, that has been pursued successfully once.

One time the administration has filed one complaint against the largest pirate of U.S. copyright patents and materials in the world, China, which was on a tax benefit extended to semiconductors; and, in fact, that worked. China backed off, although they are going to phase out this subsidy. I think they should have them immediately end it, but in any case that step did yield some results.

The administration is now raising concerns about Viagra, but it is not raising concerns about Videx. What is Videx? Videx is a little dream company in my district, started by a former Hewlett-Packard employee, started up in his garage, now employs directly more than 60 people and hundreds of other people in the production of his product, all done in the United States of America. Videx produces two different systems, a coding system that is not based on bar codes, but a different system, which is very successful, and now a new electronic locking system.

One day they got a call from their distributor in China. They had filed for Chinese patent protection, Chinese trademarks, had done everything according to Chinese law, and they got contacted by their distributor in China. They were very concerned and they did not understand why they had chosen to have another distributor. They thought they had exclusive rights. They said, what are you talking about? They found out that their entire company had been cloned in China, including the Web site. In fact, the Chinese went one better. They had little tiny American flags waving up on top of the building on the phony Videx Web site.

Everything. They used the U.S. copyright and even translated U.S. copyright patent into Chinese in stealing the software. And they made a crappy product.

So it not only cost them market share because of the counterfeiters, the counterfeiters also besmirched the name and quality of their product. And now the Chinese fakes are beginning to market this beyond China.

I have contacted everyone I can in the administration, including the Commerce Secretary and the Special Trade Representative. I have introduced legislation. I have raised this issue many times. It has been noted on the Lou Dobbs Report. We have gotten as much publicity as we can. And the only result is that Videx, in my district, has been contacted by dozens of other United States firms around the country saying exactly the same thing happened to us. Our company, our product was stolen by the Chinese. We had registered it, we had followed all the rules, and the administration will do nothing, nothing to help us.

And that is the current status we have here. Yes, they have stood up for the semiconductor giants and got some concessions from the Chinese. They are going to stand up for Pfizer and Viagra, but not for Videx, for the American dream, for small business, for dozens of companies like Videx around America who need the strong support of the United States Government to fight Chinese piracy.

This resolution is good. It will note the concern of Congress. But firmer steps are necessary.

I have introduced companion legislation to a bill in the Senate by Senator Lautenberg that would force the United States Trade Representative to file complaints against Chinese piracy. It is one thing that we are losing jobs because they have dirt-cheap labor, they do not follow environmental rules, and they should fix that, but it is another thing when they are outright stealing the intellectual property, the copyrights, and putting Americans out of business through theft. That has to stop.

This legislation is a start, but we need to take more action and the administration needs to take action in this area.

Mr. Speaker, Australia is exactly the type of nation we should seek trade agreements with, but not with a Xerox of our old and failed policies under fast track, with no amendments allowed here on the floor of the House.

There is only one new provision, strangely enough, one to prohibit the reimportation of less expensive prescription drugs. Where did that come from, I wonder? It must be American policy. No, I think it is pharmaceutical industry policy.

Now, we talk about Australia. We have a trade surplus. Why do we need this agreement? We had a trade surplus with Mexico. They talked about that how it was going to get bigger. Guess what, now we have a deficit. If we have a policy that is dramatically failing the Nation, our workers, our consumers, what do we do? In this Congress and with this administration, we do more of the same, $525 billion trade deficit, $1 million a minute of American wealth and jobs flowing overseas, mostly to unfair competition.

This agreement does not have enforceable labor standards. In fact, if we can have enforceable trademark and property standards, why can we not have an enforceable labor standard? And if we have not got one with Australia, who are we ever going to get one with?

It does not have enforceable environmental standards. If we cannot get enforceable environmental and consumer protection standards with Australia, who are we going to ever get one with? China? I do not think so.

Then why are pharmaceuticals in this agreement? Because this administration and their special trade representatives say this is a template for all future agreements, and they want to renegotiate our agreement with Canada to prohibit the reimportation of less expensive pharmaceuticals because it is undermining the obscene profits of the pharmaceutical industry. That is plain and simple.

Dairy and cheese and wheat, I think those are all questionable provisions; and, again, it undermines the ability of State and local governments to have contracting provisions that give preference to businesses of their choice.

Everything that is wrong with every other trade agreement that has led to the $525 billion trade deficit is wrong with the principles in this one. We are only lucky that it is a country that has a higher minimum wage, that has national health care, that has strong environmental laws, and that is not likely to change; but this will incorporate and further cement in these bad principles a new one that is absolutely atrocious, which protects the profits of the pharmaceutical industry against the health and welfare of the American people.

Vote ``no'' on this, and let us get a new trade policy that works for all Americans, not just a select few multinational corporations and special interests.

Mr. Speaker, the world and Iraq are better off without that murderous despot Saddam Hussein in power. But the unanimous report of the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee refutes the Bush administration's principal premise of the war that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. They concluded he did not, that he presented a danger. They said the sanctions were working and his military was degraded and rapidly disintegrating. No links to 9/11; yet the President said seven times in 32 minutes the American people were safer because of the war in Iraq.

He can say it, but it does not make it so. Osama bin Laden is still out there plotting and planning. We are on heightened alert. They say he is going to attack anytime soon, but he has given a bye for the last 2 years by the Bush administration because of their obsession with Iraq instead of those who attacked us on 9/11.

We are not safer because of the war in Iraq. We are in fact more at risk because Saddam Hussein was not the real threat. It was Osama bin Laden, who has had the chance to regroup, strengthen his forces, and plan new attacks because the Bush administration has not been adequately pursuing it.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to replace the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller).

Mr. Speaker, Saddam Hussein was a murderous despot in Iraq, and the world is better off without him. There is no disputing that fact. However, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report, all 511 pages, including the 15 percent that was redacted, raises very serious questions about the nature of the threat that Saddam Hussein posed to the United States that led to the first-ever preemptive war in the history of our country. Even the President says there were ``some shortcomings.'' Well, let us look at a few of the shortcomings.

The aluminum tubes that we were told was slam dunk evidence by Mr. Tenet of the CIA that they were going to separate uranium and enrich it misrepresented key evidence. It had nothing to do with uranium separation.

Uranium from Niger, obvious sign; a key document was forged, rather amateur forgery, actually.

The revised weapons program; the claim is not supported by the intelligence.

The mobile labs; withheld important information about the sources, lack of reliability.

This is the famous Curveball, showed up drunk at his one meeting with a U.S. intelligence representative and did not seem very credible. One upstanding individual over at the CIA wanted to raise concerns and go on record about how the fact he was not a good source, but the deputy chief of the agency's Iraqi task force said we can hash this out in a quick meeting. He rejected the worries as irrelevant.

Here is his quote: ``Let's keep in mind the fact that this war is going to happen regardless of what Curveball said or didn't said and that the powers that be probably aren't terribly interested in whether Curveball knows what he's talking about,'' the CIA official replied in an e-mail message obtained by the committee. Basically, they did not want to know that this was phony information.

Smallpox designer germs. Not supported by the intelligence, according to the CIA.

The drones. I saw pictures of the drones. They were these little patched-together things, and George Bush was talking about what a tremendous threat they were. Did not look like they could fly at all, and they certainly could not fly any distance. The head of intelligence for the Air Force, they know a little about planes, said, in fact, there was no credible threat connected to the drones.

The list goes on and on and on. And as the President says, there were some shortcomings. There were more than some shortcomings; there was an extraordinary distortion of very, very poor intelligence and minimal evidence that there was any threat posed by Saddam Hussein. In fact, the conclusion of this Republican Senate-led Select Committee on Intelligence is that the military of Saddam Hussein was on a horrible downward spiral, was incredibly degraded, had never recovered from the Gulf War, that the sanctions in the containment were working, and that he did not pose any credible threat to the United States nor even to Iran or some of his other neighbors.

But the President would still say, as he did seven times in 32 minutes yesterday, just to make sure people did not miss the message behind him, which was to show that American people are safer. Well, there is a real question about that since they put us on a higher terror alert. They are talking about postponing the elections. Postponing the constitutionally mandated elections, I do not know how they do that, but I guess it is part of his executive powers we do not know about, because of the threat posed by Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, who have been over there regrouping and freely operating for the 2 years the Bush administration turned all our intelligence assets, the world's attentions, our military assets to Iraq.

And they say the world is safer? The world is not safer. In fact, he allowed those people to regroup and to raise a threat that is so grave that his Homeland Security Secretary is asking how we might be able to postpone the elections if we know 3 or 4 days before that George Bush is behind in the polls. No, no, I mean do we know there is a credible threat or there was a terrorist attack?

Now, there was one piece of evidence that was good. There is a guy named Zakawi; and he is a really, really bad guy. And Colin Powell pointed to where he was on the map. Guess where that was? That was in a little corner of Iraq, behind the Kurdish territory, which was overflown by the United States on a daily basis. Saddam Hussein could not get at that guy if he wanted to. But we could have, three times.

Three times the Pentagon asked to take out Zakawi, who is now responsible for killing maybe tens of hundreds of U.S. troops and Iraqis in a terrorist campaign, and three times the Bush administration said, no, you cannot take him out. Because if you take him out, it might disturb our recruiting for the war against Iraq that does not pose a threat to the United States of America. What incredibly misplaced priorities these people have.

If it is a war on terrorism, then go after the terrorists: Osama bin, al Qaeda, Zakawi. But, no, they distracted us into this war with Iraq in some bizarre neoconservative vision of the world, and many Americans have died because of their mistakes, and I fear that more might because he has allowed the terrorists to regroup.

Mr. Speaker, finally, finally Enron chief executive Kenneth Lay, or ``Ken Boy'' as the President affectionately called him, has been indicted and done the perp walk. He masterminded Enron, a corporation that built billions from millions in the Western United States while his employees gloated about sticking it to Grandma Milly. Every Oregonian is paying 40 percent more for their electricity because of manipulation of the market by Enron.

Now the President does not return Ken Boy's calls anymore despite his past generosity, but the President should do more. The President should return the $139,500 Ken Lay personally contributed to him, the $602,625 that Enron gave to President Bush. This is money stolen from Grandma Milly and other Western consumers, and the President should give it to a low-income energy assistance fund. It is tainted money. Let us put this chapter behind us, but let us have restitution, Mr. President.

Madam Speaker, just before the July 4 recess, the Democrats on our side of the aisle attempted to offer an amendment to force the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, chaired by Pat Wood of Texas, appointed by George Bush of Texas, from continuing to conceal documents regarding Enron of Texas and the scandal and the fraud of which Enron has perpetrated upon the people of the Western United States, costing us tens of billions of dollars, a huge runup in our electricity costs, something that is continuing to hurt the economy of Oregon, Washington, and California. All the businesses depended upon energy, small businesses and residential consumers.

The Republicans would not allow that amendment to be debated on the floor of the House because of its kind of embarrassing links between Enron and the Bush administration and the fraud that was perpetrated on the Western United States.

Ken Lay, as the chief executive of Enron, was the mastermind of this fraud. He bilked billions of dollars from millions of people for his own personal profit and that of his executives, and he was finally today brought to justice. We finally saw him in handcuffs on television, and hopefully he will have a long stay in jail, and hopefully he will also have to work during that stay and not just get free room and board, because he has already extracted enough cost from hard-working Americans.

When we asked for a meeting with Vice President Cheney during the huge runup in prices in the Western United States, we got together; he got together with the Northwest delegation. And he, in response to concerns I raised, said that I was really stupid, and I just did not understand that this had nothing to do with fraud, abuse, or market manipulation. This was all about market forces. I just did not understand markets and that Enron was a leader in markets, and I just did not understand markets, and unless we build one 500-megawatt plant every week for the next 15 years, and this is Vice President Cheney, the $4,000 megawatt prices, about 100 times normal, would continue forever.

Of course, then we appealed to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, seeing that the Vice President's mind was slightly closed on the matter. And the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, chaired by Pat Wood of Texas, with a couple of other appointees chosen by Ken Lay of Texas, of Enron, refused to look into it. Finally, after additional pressure was raised, they said they would look into it. Then they said, no, it is just market forces. There is no market manipulation.

Then a strange thing happened. The Senate changed hands. When the Senator from Vermont changed to Independent, and the Democrats took over

the Senate, and Diane Feinstein from California threatened to hold hearings on what was going on in the Western energy market, suddenly the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission reviewed its records and found, lo and behold, there was a scandal.

Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

Madam Speaker, certainly. I would not want to mention any individual Senators.

So the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission then suddenly said, oh, no, there is something wrong here. It is a little bit weird that prices are up to 100 times normal. And they reimposed the price caps, which we had during the Clinton administration.

Now we have the tapes of the Enron Corporation, and Ken Lay says he did nothing wrong. The tapes are incredible. The marketers talk about shutting off plants to drive up prices. They talk about gouging Grandma Milly. They talk about getting rid of the Clinton administration, price caps are gone, and Ken Lay is going to run things in this country, and, by God, they are going to make a lot of money. And they did for a while at tremendous pain and cost to the Western United States, all while the Bush administration looked the other way.

Pat Wood of Texas is still in charge of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The Bush administration is continuing to push for more deregulation. They think the only thing that Enron did wrong and the only thing wrong with deregulation is that Enron got caught, because they were having a wonderful time making a bunch of money.

Now it comes that Ken Lay of Texas is the largest single, individual, lifetime contributor to George Bush of Texas, the President of the United States, and he has contributed over his life $139,500 to President Bush. His company contributed $625,000 to President Bush.

I would call upon the President to return these ill-gotten gains, the money that Ken Lay stole from Grandma Milly and others in the Western United States, and to show that he understands and has compassion. He could contribute the money to low-income energy funds in the Western United States to help Grandma Milly, who was taken to the cleaners by Ken Lay of Texas, of Enron, Mr. Bush's best friend, ``Ken Boy'' Lay.

Mr. Speaker, today the Transportation Safety Administration finally announced that they are going to plug a huge, gaping loophole in aviation security, 15 months after I first brought this issue to their attention.

While Americans nationwide stand patiently in line and the pilots and flight attendants are standing in line, sometimes unnecessarily long lines because of an arbitrary cap on the number of screeners by the Republican majority, unbeknownst to them, hundreds of thousands of people on a daily basis have been filing around security carrying whatever they wanted, just flashing an ID at a guard. That is, all the vendors who work in the airport, the people who have access to the terminal and to the airplanes.

Finally today, today, after being beat over the head for months, the Transportation Security Administration is going to require that those people also go through security so that they will not be able to carry contraband, weapons, drugs or whatever through, to be smuggled aboard airplanes. This will improve security for Americans. It took an awfully long time to get action from the Bush administration to fill this loophole.

Mr. Speaker, like those Members who rose before me, I support the underlying bill. It is a vital investment in our country. But I do object to the rule because it is long past time to begin to rectify this massive theft that went on.

Every day, today every Oregonian, every residential ratepayer, every business will pay, on average, 42 percent more for the electrons purchased from the same plants transmitted over the same electric lines as 4 years ago. Just one thing happened in between. That is the Bush administration, the Bush FERC and Kenny Boy Enron Lay, the President's previous largest single contributor until this year.

The Snohomish utility found that on 473 of 537 days, Enron manipulated the market. How can the Bush FERC say that is just and reasonable and not require that those illegal contracts achieved through market manipulation be voided? We do not know because they will not release the documents. They do not want people to know how involved Enron was in setting the national energy policy.

In the year before the Bush administration released their energy policy, Enron officials met with members of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and their staff on 272 occasions during one work year. That means on every day there was an Enron official in the FERC offices. Were they also in Vice President Cheney's office? We do not know because he is fighting release of those records. We need these illegal contracts to be voided, and we need all of the documentation released about this massive market manipulation.

This is continuing to cast a pall over the economy of the Pacific Northwest. We have some of the worst unemployment in the country over the last few years, and a good part is because billions of dollars have been illegally extracted from our ratepayers by the Texas-based Enron company with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission appointed by President Bush standing by complicit, compliant and silent.