Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity you have given us to speak for awhile about public lands and about how the public lands are treated and how the future will and will not deal with those public lands.

One of the facts that we have to deal with is how a government deals with property, whether personal property or public property, is a window to the soul of that government. Personal property is tangible and civil liberties are intangible, but both of them are at the center of the historic purpose of this American government, and the preservation of one is indeed the precondition for the preservation of the other.

Sir Henry Maine once wrote a book called ``The Village Communities'' in which he said: Nobody is at liberty to attack several property and to say at the same time he values civilization. The history of the two cannot be disentangled. The desire, the use of property, whether it is on land or whether it is the use of public property, that desire is what raises mankind from political slavery.

One of the things that we do not often enough around this place is to consider why we are doing what we are doing. Indeed, one of the concepts that is there is that we do what we do because we have done what we always did; and sometimes when you take a moment to look back and reflect on that, in this particular Congress we have been inundated with laws and proposals which have huge and significant impact on personal and public property in the United States.

Mr. Speaker, one of the things I would like to do is try to go through with several Members who are in the West, public land States who understand firsthand the responsibility and relationship of this, specifically what we are doing in these particular areas.

One of the people I would like to address some of these issues deals with the public property in our forests. As you know, we are having major fires in this country, and the Speaker on this floor said now is the time we need to do what is right.

I would like to yield some time to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Walden) and simply ask him to address that, of what can this Congress do to make it right, especially when we deal with our forests and our processes for the future of our forests to make them healthier or better.

I appreciate the gentleman from Oregon who's been a leader in trying to make sure that we have a healthy forest environment, and it means that we have to change some of the policies that we've had in the past, and I appreciate his leadership in those areas. I would like him to address just maybe one element.

Because of mistakes, I think, that we have made in the past on how we have decided to handle the forests in the future, those counties, those areas where citizens live next to the forest and where the forest becomes an integral part of their lifestyle, are facing a huge and significant problem, and especially their kids in secure rural schools. I wonder if the gentleman for just one second would take a moment to explain what we should be doing right now with relationship to secure rural schools, forest area schools.

You have long been involved in bipartisan efforts to solve this problem for your constituents, especially with their schools. I wonder if you would just take a couple more minutes before we segue into the next speaker, next area, simply talking about what we practically can do for secure rural schools right now, as well as what we should probably ask our leadership to do that we should be practically doing right now in the long term for healthy forests in the future.

I appreciate the comments from the gentleman from Oregon. I especially appreciate his comments about our bipartisan bill that has been referred out of Resources. The Speaker of the House does have the ability of helping to move that bill along and can change the referral process to bring this one to the floor. And how significant this is, with these particular counties for the so-called secure rural schools, schools that are impacted by our policies in the passed-over forestlands. We need to have that on the floor now, and it has a funding source. It can be moved right now. I think I would probably join you in asking the Speaker publicly to bring that bill to the floor, let us vote on it, let us move the process forward, get it over to the Senate so we can solve that problem.

I appreciate the gentleman from Oregon for specifically and very eloquently stating what the problems are in our national forests.

He, as well as I and many of those who will be speaking this evening, come from what are called public lands States. You see the map that I have to my left. Everything that is blue in those States is the amount of that State which is owned and controlled by the National Government, and you can obviously see that there's a unique difference between the States in the West and the States in the East.

Now, a big chunk of this blue in the West is national forests, which Representative Walden understands very definitely, very clearly, and needs to deal with that particular issue. And he's given us some directions on what we need to do to do it right.

The other part of this blue deals with land that's owned by the Bureau of Land Management, BLM land, and all of these lands, whether they be forestlands or BLM lands or parklands, have an impact on the States in which we find this particular land.

I'd ask my colleague from Utah, Mr. Cannon, if you'd maybe take a moment and talk about how we try to help these Western States that don't have control over their lands but still have the responsibility of providing services not just for the westerners but also the easterners that are coming directly on these lands with a program known as PILT, payment in lieu of taxes.

I yield to Mr. Cannon.

One of the things I have been hearing so many times, you may have said this already earlier, that PILT, payment for all these lands, is nothing more than a handout for the poor western counties.

Is this a handout or is this a responsibility that we have for these lands?

We are talking about what these lands can do and how we can benefit the constituents that are out there in these western lands as well. One of it deals with the bounties that have been placed in there in these western lands, what we can do if we actually bring them about.

I am often amazed how we sit under this quotation from Daniel Webster saying that in actuality if we want this country to move, we need to take the resources that are here and develop them. That's where progress comes.

The gentleman represents a State in an area that has a significant amount of natural resources that have yet to be developed, and I am talking specifically about oil shale. I notice that he has been joined here on the floor by Representative Peterson of Pennsylvania, two people who understand our energy policy specifically and who realize some of the energy policies that we have been talking about passing on this floor are going to have a negative effect on people, on real people.

I wonder if he could spend some time talking about the potential of oil shale and what it can do. I guess the basic question is, is it really possible to remove ourselves from a dependency on foreign sources of energy?

I appreciate it. I hope Mr. Cannon may have a chance to join us a little bit later.

We are talking about energy policies. It has an impact on people. We all like alternative forms of energy. That's important. But for the short term, we have to make life bearable for people. We have some options without having to rely simply on foreign sources.

Mr. Cannon understands oil shale very well, and he explained how that is one of our options. Another option we have is natural gas, which is a forte of Mr. Peterson at the same time. I guess the question has to be, we understand how high natural gas prices terribly impact citizens trying to live their lives, heat their homes. They impact the job market as well. They impact farmers when it comes time for fertilizer. I guess the question is, can we make domestic natural gas reserves available so it improves the lives of people?

If I could ask Mr. Peterson to spend a few minutes, 5 minutes or so, maybe explaining how that part of the energy puzzle can be dealt.

I appreciate the gentleman from Pennsylvania, who understands this issue.

Let me see if I can borrow that one you have in your left hand. I'm not all that hot on a lot of the details of energy and mining, but I am a school teacher, and I just noticed on the back of this chart is a chart which goes through the salaries of teachers comparing Wyoming and Montana. And you find that a step one teacher in Wyoming is significantly higher than a step four teacher in Montana. And I want to tell you, there's only one reason for that disparity. Wyoming does more with their resources to develop them and use them to help fund their education system. It has all sorts of spin-off effects.

I appreciate the gentleman from Pennsylvania who understands this concept so significantly and has spoken so eloquently about it.

I'd also like to welcome the gentleman from New Mexico who is here, who clearly understands the issue of energy significantly.

We will have a potential energy bill before us. We will have next week a potential mining bill before us, both of which could have some difficult situations especially as they deal with Americans. So I'd like to yield to the gentleman from New Mexico to have a chance to talk for a moment especially on what we are doing, once again, as to our constituents.

I appreciate the gentleman from New Mexico coming and talking about these issues, and I think people can realize we feel very strong and deeply about these particular issues. This is what happens in our States. We live with this issue all together.

You've heard today about the nature of our forests and what we must do to have healthy forests in the future. You heard about the impact it has on school children in those forest counties. But there is a proposal; it needs to come to the floor that we can debate about that as well.

You've heard about the significance of payment in lieu of taxes and what it means to Western States, about oil shale development, natural gas development, mining development, all of these which have an impact.

Now, I said earlier on, but once again I'm just an old school teacher. And it does have impacts beyond what we naturally think about. And I'm thinking specifically about my kids, about my salary, my retirement as a school teacher and what we do in the future in our Western States.

We noticed before, this is the chart, the amount of blue is how many, how much land is owned by the Federal Government in each State. I'd like you to contrast that, if you would, with this chart. The States in red are the States that have the most difficult time increasing the amount of money and paying for their education. The States that are red have the growth in education but they also have the most difficult time in adjusting for that growth. And if you look at that and then compare it once again with the public land States, you'll find an amazing correlation. The public land States are having the most difficult time funding their education, and I think there is a relationship to it which we have yet to fully investigate, and we ought to. It's a subject for a future time, but it's also one of those things that are important because there are collateral impacts that are extremely important on how we actually follow the advice of Daniel Webster up there, which told us to develop our resources so that we can move this Nation forward. And this is the time we have to do it. And there are right ways of doing it and there are probably imprudent ways of doing it. It's important that we do it the right ways, and we in the West clearly understand the significance of that.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I appreciate your patience.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the ranking member. I realize when we talk about procedure, it is boring. People's eyes start to glaze over.

You are 1 out of 435. But one of the current senior Democrat chairmen 20 years ago wrote that if I let you write substance and you let me write procedure, I will win every time. Actually, he didn't use quite those words, but I don't think the actual verbiage can be used with the rules of our House. But it is the same sentiment that has to be there.

Poor procedure has been said creates poor policy. And the ranking member has already said there have been more closed rules, fewer minority Members' rules allowed this year than ever before.

I was in the Education Committee when Representative Ehlers made his amendment, accepted by the chairman on a voice vote; and yet, when the bill came out of the Rules Committee, the amendment had magically disappeared, a bill that affected my State in redistricting.

Mr. Gohmert from Texas had made an excellent amendment in the Judiciary Committee, but when that bill came out of the Rules Committee, once again that amendment had basically simply disappeared.

I realize the Rules Committee is a political type of committee, but it is coming to the point right now when someone says, ``Well, you better go make your case before the Rules Committee,'' you simply abandoned all hope. It is like being on the Titanic and being told that the ship coming to rescue you is the Lusitania.

I have been on the Rules Committee, as has been said. I have been chairman of a rules committee in Utah. And I realize that more than just simply moving legislation, the committee should try and find bipartisan solutions; should make sure that we spend time in debate on the floor vetting issues that were not covered in committee, especially when so many bills are being written by the Rules Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. The amendments I have actually brought to the Rules Committee were, in my estimation, trying to produce a bipartisan approach, or in dealing especially with one that impacted my State of Utah, an amendment that we were trying to talk about a bill that had been changed significantly in the Rules Committee from what had been discussed in the committee, but trying to do amendments that would have saved my State millions of dollars and allowed us to have the flexibility of creating the process that we wanted to have. Both Mr. Cannon and I presented those in Rules. All of them were totally shut down.

The Rules, there is a little bit more to that. Allow me to quote once again from an issue that happened about 20 years ago when a Speaker of the House was forced to resign in a very partisan atmosphere. He said, all year, partisanship had fed on itself, frustrating each side, driven each side apart. The majority at that time, the Democrats, were looking at the majority. The majority group contemptuous of it, the minority, more determined to govern in spite of it, more arbitrary and faced with increasing arbitrariness of the majority, the minority grew more irresponsible and more destructive of the institution.

The Rules Committee has a function more than just establishing the parameters of what amendments will be discussed and the debate. They have a responsibility to establish an atmosphere, indeed, a tone, on the floor. And they can either fan the flames of partisanship or they can build a process that encourages bipartisanship and encourages discussion of issues, issues that have not been vetted before on the floor. That is what the Rules Committee should be doing, and I am sad to say it has not been in evidence so far this year on the floor.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman from New Jersey for helping to organize this, as well as talk about these topics, and every once in a while to take the process that we probably should be doing more often and simply review our actions and see if they deal with some type of philosophical basis.

When the Founding Fathers established this country, they established a Federal system with the understanding that certain powers and responsibilities would be given to the national level and certain powers and responsibilities on the local level.

Now, this was not done in some random process. They took the time to try and figure out which would best fit in which category, realizing there are some tasks of government that naturally would be better done if they were done on a unified level, and certain other responsibilities that would be best performed by local government.

One of those that they decided would be better performed, and I should say best performed, a superlative, by local government was the manner of elections. And they clearly realized that if elections were the purview and responsibility of States that they had a better opportunity of being effective and

less chance of being corrupt in so doing.

Some of our European allies when they restructured their governments after World War II also did the Federal system; and once again they divided powers and responsibilities between national and local levels.

And one of the powers and responsibilities given to the local level, for obvious reasons of effectiveness and lack of corruption, was that of the manner of elections.

The State of Utah, I'm very proud to say, had wonderful registration rolls when I was in the legislature and in a leadership role there, and actually our voter registration I thought was fairly accurate. That's the reason we do have voter registration anyway is to prevent fraud.

In the 1800s, we talked about this wonderful process of everybody voting in America, but we don't really know how many people actually voted, only the number of votes that were tabulated, for we had in history this process or this individual known as a floater who was paid between $5 and $20 per vote. In fact, I have to admit within my own family one of my ancestors was given the day off with pay to vote. He voted in his workplace, took a train and went down to the capitol and voted a second time, and then went home and wrote about how he voted a third time. The reason we have voter registration is to prohibit that today.

I was in the leadership in the legislature when the Federal Government in its wisdom came up with the Motor Voter Act which took our wonderful rolls and registration systems and bloated them beyond compare. When we were able to purge voter rolls after 4 years, we now had to do it after 10 years. When everyone was asked whenever they got a service from the government if they'd like to register, and they couldn't remember if they registered or not, they re-registered them.

If you look at the number of people in Utah who are registered in a State that has the largest percentage of kids of any State in the Nation, the numbers don't fit of those who are registered and those who are simply eligible to vote. So I don't really know what percentage is voting. We're making guesses there.

The greatest thing of all in this entire program is the Federal Government gave us as a State the great privilege and honor of paying for it all ourselves. At that time I was sad the 17th amendment was in place because had it not been there and the State legislature selected senators, I can promise you that bill would have changed or our Senate delegation would have changed.

Then the Federal Government assisted States again while I was still back in Utah with the Help America Vote Act. Now, I have to admit that we in Utah did not have the problem of hanging chads as some certain southern States that will not be mentioned did have. We had a definition of what a vote was and was not, and we looked at every ballot of those punch cards to determine if it was a legal ballot before it was ever run through the system.

Our system was effective, it was efficient, it was cheap; but we complied to the Federal Government's assistance to make everything better with the Help America Vote Act. Now, the Federal Government did give us some money, but certainly not enough to pay for the entire system. So at great expense, the State of Utah and other States changed their election system at the dictate and mandate of the Federal Government. I have to say we may actually probably have a better system, but it's also a much more expensive system.

We now have a proposal given to us by Members of the Democratic side that would force another change in the system that has just established under the Help America Vote Act, another system that requires even my State, which has a paper trail system in place, to change it because we don't have the right kind of paper.

The reality is I think, and I think that the Constitution and our Founding Fathers would tell us, if you really want to have a good election system just get out of the way and let the States fulfill their constitutional responsibility of the manner of election, and there would be greater efficiency and less likelihood of corruption. We should not be micromanaging States. One size does not fit all.

The State of Utah, in a poll conducted by BYU, has a 95 percent competence in our system of government, which if the opposition bill were to pass would have to be totally changed, and we would once again bear the costs and burden of doing that.

Now, I know that our good friend from Iowa (Mr. King) has another bill in that would probably address many of these issues and many of these problems. I think, Mr. Garrett, if it's all right with you as the chairman of this caucus, if we were maybe to hear from the gentleman from Iowa at this time to at least express another way of getting around what appears to be another mandate that would change and add significant difficulty to States what they don't need: the heavy-handed help of the Federal Government.

If I could just add a couple of those to it. It is true. When George Washington was first elected to the House of Burgess, he bought a round of drinks for all the supporters. And my students would obviously wonder, well, how do you know who his supporters were? The idea of a secret ballot is a pretty modern concept. In the good old days, when you came into the town centers you said, and when the vote was counted and they asked how many were for George Washington, they stood up. He saw who was voting for him; he knew they were there. Everything was an open process at that particular time. And that is why in England you stand for election; you don't run like we do. Because literally you could come up there in the election and you would have to stand for the election.

I used to watch these cartoons on Thomas Nast right after the Civil War. I saw one where there was this globe for which one Union soldier was reaching, I had no idea what it was, it was a clear crystal ball, until I realized what he was reaching for was a ballot box which was clear. And the gentleman is right, you would get a ballot from a campaign; you would go in there, and you would deposit your colored ballots so everyone knew. In fact, in New York City at one time, in case they were color-blind, they would perfume their ballots so you could smell it if you couldn't see it. But the idea of a secret ballot is something that is just recently here.

I appreciate what you just said, because almost everything you are trying to explain in kind of a system that would work happens to be exactly what we are doing in the State of Utah without having the Federal Government tell us how to do it. So we do have that voting system where you do see the paper ballots there, and you look at the paper trail

that is there as well as the actual touch screen, and you are asked if the paper is what you want. You don't take it with you, but it is there as part of the audit trail.

And we actually do require picture IDs when you come into vote. And even I, in my voting district, in fact literally the lady who lived across the street from me was there and I still had to produce a picture ID before I could get my card to go vote.

One of the problems, though, that I see and one of the reasons why we need an alternative to what the bill that came out of the committee is, simply, even the State of Utah would have to change its process, even though we are doing exactly what they want, because it doesn't fit the kinds of machines that are mandated, it doesn't fit the kind of paper that was mandated, it doesn't fit the kind of audit process that is mandated. This bill tells you what to do with long lines, it tells you what to do with provisional ballots, it tells you what to do with recounts, and it says you have to do it now.

And that is one of the reasons why I am grateful there are some other options out here, because the bill that may be on the floor, the bill that did come out of the committee, the bill is simply flawed in many ways, and it is simply flawed because, once again, it has the mindset that the Federal Government is going to tell you how to do things in the most intricate way of micromanagement. And that is one of the flaws we have. This country is never supposed to be micromanaged from this body.

I thank the ranking member from California.

Madam Speaker, I stand, I guess, to oppose the reconciliation bill that doesn't reconcile much. In this particular bill, it encourages direct loan programs, programs that are paid for and controlled by the Federal Government, and whether intentionally or not, a tax to discourage programs like FFEL, which are public-private partnerships where the government actually provides funds, but they are not administered by the government.

In a clumsy way of verbiage, by lumping not-for-profit programs, and not-for-profit program lenders in the same category as for-profit lenders, it creates an unintended consequence that does harm to college students in my State.

My State has a higher education authority program. It's a not-for- profit-program administered by the State that provides students who have loans under this program with deductions. It's 1\1/4\ percent automatic deduction if you have an automatic payment program. It's a 2 percent deduction on the rate after 48 consecutive payments have been on time, which means for a kid on this program on a standard $15,000 Stafford loan, he could actually save $2,000 over the cost of that loan and over what would happen in a direct pay program. Perhaps I am a little bit sensitive to this because I still have four kids in college, and I know what the expense of college actually means.

In this reconciliation bill, by lumping the not-for-profit programs with profit programs, the margins that they have in these not-for- profit programs are so small that these deductions will no longer be available, if, indeed, the program can survive by itself.

It will force students in my State either to pay the full government rate without any deductions or go to the full rate of a for-profit lender.

I know the intention of this bill is not to hurt kids. The intention of this bill is perhaps to rid FFEL programs; but in so doing, it actually does, in fact, hurt real kids who have programs right now or who may be having programs in the future.

Oftentimes when we fiddle around education, we have unintended consequences; but our actions here, because it is at such a gross level, have unintended consequences of hurting real live people. This bill does that. Not intentionally, but it still does that.

It would have been far better for us to do the program that the ranking member was always talking about, encouraging and expanding Pell Grants. That would do more to help kids than all the other restructuring we are doing in this particular reconciliation bill.

For those reasons, because it does hurt kids in my State, I have to oppose the reconciliation bill.

Mr. Speaker, today I rise to join both of my colleagues from Utah, as well as, apparently, the chairman of the Natural Resources Committee in expressing our profound sympathies for the Utah families who lost their loved ones at the Crandall Canyon mine. I'm not a miner, but I have been told that unless one has been a miner, it's impossible to understand the profession, the mindset and the courage that is displayed by those who work daily under dangerous conditions so that the rest of us can live in an element of comfort.

Today, this body honors six competent, courageous men who labored to

provide a better future for their families and all of us.

On August 6, the Crandall Canyon mine experienced a shift in the Earth that registered a 4 on the Richter scale at the nearby University of Utah. This left almost 2,000 feet of debris between the working area of the mine and the last known location of these miners. Kerry Allred, Don Erickson, Luis Hernandez, Carlos Payan, Brandon Phillips and Manuel Sanchez were lost in this catastrophe.

In addition, three very courageous heroes sacrificed their lives to rescue their fellow miners. Only miners fully understand this commitment to those they consider brothers. Dale Black, Brandon Kimber, Gary Jensen, miners and a mine safety official lost their lives during this rescue effort. We cannot also forget the five other miners and the Mine Safety and Health Administration officials who were injured in this effort.

Dozens of miners and officials put their life at risk by entering this mine to try and find and recover their colleagues, and over a period of 4 weeks the rescue efforts tried to reach these men through the working section of the mine, as well as horizontally, with seven bore holes drilled in a vain attempt to find the trapped miners. This self-sacrifice has been demonstrated throughout mining history.

I have the firm belief that this life is not finite, and we shall all be reunited again; that these noble men who lost their lives will be reunited with their loved ones in the future. And though the separation may be short, it is extremely difficult for those left behind to bear that separation.

I applaud our colleague, Congressman Matheson, for introducing this resolution, one which deals with the sympathy for those who were involved in this particular effort and as an effort to try and comfort them at this particular time.

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

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to yield to the senior member of our delegation to, once again, signify and symbolize the unity that the entire State feels as we face this disaster. I yield as much time as he may consume to Mr. Cannon of Utah.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Wilson).

Mr. Speaker, though the structure of these resolutions require a Republican and Democrat both to present legislation, on this day when we deal with an issue of comfort, not on politics, this day we are all united as we honor these miners who were trapped and those who worked to find these men. We grieve with their families in our hearts, our prayers, our thoughts. The memory of these nine men will not diminish, and I urge all my colleagues to join with Mr. Matheson, Mr. Cannon, and myself in supporting this resolution.

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

Mr. Speaker, allow me rhetorically, if I can, just to concentrate on one issue, the one at hand, which is the significant proposal, the motion to instruct made by the gentleman from Michigan.

As a member of the Armed Services Committee, as well as the Education Committee, I strongly support this extremely important motion that has been given to us today.

On the day in July when my State celebrates the arrival of the pioneers into Salt Lake Valley, in a remote Pakistani town, the Pakistani police were closing in on one house that had been given as an intelligence tip that the top Taliban leader was inside. According to the Washington Post, this Taliban leader, Abdullah Mehsud, if I have pronounced that properly, was a short, round man in his early thirties, who had been an active Taliban commander in Pakistan for many years.

Amazingly, though, this same man had been among the first military detainees at Guantanamo and had been released in 2004. Upon his release, what did he do? Go back to Pakistan, once again working with the Taliban, helping al Qaeda infiltrators coming into the rugged mountains area of Pakistan.

But on this fateful day back in July, with the Pakistani police closing in, this top Taliban leader, who only the year before had been leading terrorist activities against mosques, had kidnapped a couple of Chinese engineers, and who knows what else, pulled the pin on a hand grenade and blew himself up rather than resubmit to the authorities.

It's memorable and reminds one of the extravagances that took place in March of 2004 in Madrid when the subway bombings killed 200, injured 2,000 people. This al Qaeda-inspired terrorist activity and the leaders of that were tracked down by Spanish authorities; and as they surrounded the apartment where they were, the terrorists, the al Qaeda terrorists, had preplanned their own self-martyrdom by having wired their own apartment. So as the police closed in upon them, they pushed the button, not only blowing themselves up but also almost imploding the entire building, which would have killed hundreds of other innocent victims.

Now, the reason, Mr. Speaker, that I present these two anecdotal stories is simply this: these people are not nice people. They're murderers of the worst sort. They're ideologically driven to kill. They would stop at nothing to try and kill as many men, women and children, if possible, in their goals of maximizing the amount of pain and destruction, especially those relating to us. They do not belong on American soil, nor do they belong to be released back to their own countries, where they can reorganize again, in this war, not just again on terror, but also the war against civilization and basic humanity.

The motion to instruct asks this conference to accept the language passed in a similar bill in the Senate on an overwhelming 94-3 vote that rejects transferring a terrorist detained in Guantanamo to the United States soil. Our penal system, as we envision it, is one of rehabilitation. Obviously, these people have not been rehabilitated; and as we discuss what we will do as our options, as we discuss any kind of closure that may take place in Guantanamo, we should obviously say which options are not acceptable.

Moving any of these prisoners to the United States is simply not acceptable. Returning them to their homes is simply not acceptable. Destroying the intelligence value we have at Guantanamo is simply not acceptable.

This sense of the Congress resolution simply is one of those things that this body, the people's body, the House of Representatives, should overwhelmingly support. I cannot imagine anyone honestly believing it is a good idea to close Guantanamo and bring these individuals into our neighborhoods and into our backyards, nor to release them back to their country of origin where they'd be free to reorganize themselves.

As Mr. McConnell said on the floor today, this is not a motion simply for the status quo. Flexibility of what our choices will be would still be allowed, but it does clearly say that the one option that is not acceptable would be a closing of Guantanamo Bay with the only option being of removing these people and bringing them back into our neighborhoods, back into our homes and back on American soil.

For that, I appreciate what the gentleman from Michigan has done in bringing this once again to our attention so that we can join the Senate in

making sure that this is very clear of what is not our policy option.

Madam Speaker, the issue at hand today is not the 23 miles of wild and scenic river in what is called the Eightmile River. It is on the use of condemnation power to create it. It is sad in this situation that staff did not decide to work in a bipartisan way to try and come up with language accommodating everybody, instead, rejected in both the Rules and Resource Committees on straight party- line votes, simple and direct language that the Republicans submitted. We asked that it simply read that no Federal funds be used to condemn land to carry out the purpose of that act. Every Democrat, from the sponsor to the committee, said that was indeed their goal.

That is simple language in section B. It is short; it's direct; it's understandable to any citizen, any attorney, any judge. That's what we need.

Instead, the Democrats gave us a convoluted bit of double talk about zoning ordinances by some date in 2005, later on perhaps, willing sellers, all in the wrong section of the code, section C.

It is nice, but it is a loophole. Simply because if you read, not the bill, but the act, read the entire act, you'll find that all of the language that is presented in this section, in this bill comes after this sentence in the law which says, nothing contained in this section, that covers what we're talking about and what they're talking about, nothing contained in this section shall preclude the use of condemnation. This supersedes everything in their bill. All the gobbledygook they want to do, it supersedes it.

This is the language to which we object, and the Democrat bill does nothing to mitigate this power of condemnation.

I don't care if we're talking about an Eightmile River in Connecticut for Mr. Courtney or 8 miles of road in Detroit for Eminem. This is still the issue that is at hand. In the district where the State and local governments tried to take the home away from Suzette Kelo, we don't want it to be replicated again. This language has to be changed.

So all of us need to lose yourself in this language. Read it, for indeed our citizens will. The voters will. It is clear. This is what we need changed.

Madam Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Madam Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Madam Speaker, I have had the wonderful opportunity, or privilege, I guess, at different times, of standing, sitting in this chair, standing at this mike either to present bills or to control time or to present rules. Oftentimes, I was perplexed at the discussion that went on, because oftentimes our side would be giving wonderful speeches and their side would be giving wonderful speeches but never on the same topic. We didn't even have the terms defined. That will not happen today with this particular bill, because there is but one issue, and the issue is clear, and it is precise.

We do not have a problem with the creation of the wild and scenic river for this Eightmile area in the State of Connecticut. I am under the assumption that at the public hearings that were held in Connecticut, issues that could be of concern, for example, if you have a kid and want to add a bedroom, if you want to add a garage to your home, if you want to fix the roof to your house, if you want to repair a road that's been washed out or even ask to clear some of the brush next to the river, that not only could that possibly be prohibited, but it would probably be prohibited because there is precedent in other wild and scenic areas where that exact same thing has happened.

But, with that, and I am sure it was covered in those public hearings, I am convinced a majority of residents in this area supported the wild and scenic area. I was somewhat disenchanted, when we were told in the hearing it was unanimous support. Later on, we found out it was not that and the record has been amended to illustrate that.

In one city, in which one of the letters I received said only five people were opposed to it, in reality it was about a 400-person meeting with about a third, about 40 percent who were opposed to it. Still not a majority, so I am not opposed to the scenic river.

What is significant, though, is there is a significant minority of individuals in this area that are fearful of what may happen to their homes in this area. Their rights and their fears should be considered and should be considered carefully. It is ironic that this happens to be in the district in which both the leaders of the State and local government turned their backs on Susette Kelo and brought about that infamous court case decision dealing with Kelo, imminent domain issues.

We do not want that to be replicated, which is clearly why the Republicans presented language in both the Resources and Rules Committee to make it specifically clear what was the intent of this bill. The language we propose simply says, no Federal funds may be used to condemn land to carry out the purposes of this act or the amendment made by subsection B. Nothing would be done. It is puzzling to us why the Democratic Party would not support that language, when all the Democrats from the sponsor to the committee chairman say that is, indeed, their goal.

If their goal is not to use condemnation, then you should say so. Why this wasn't accepted in a bipartisan way is, for me, puzzling. Otherwise, this bill need not to be here today; it could easily be handled by unanimous consent.

The language that the chairman of the subcommittee gave you does not prohibit condemnation. It is based on zoning ordinances, zoning ordinances.

It is unusual that, indeed, Federal statute should be contingent on local governments coming up with their zoning ordinance as of a specific date.

What happens if they don't have those? What happens if they change those zoning ordinances, as has already happened?

This is like a trial lawyer's dream come true in being able to take this language to a court and say, Look, Congress didn't specifically protect property rights with no condemnation language; they put their emphasis on local control. Ergo, local control should take precedence.

They claim that the only land that will be taken will be done by donations or willing sellers. Another phrase, we have problems, simply because we have files that are bulging, of citizens who became willing sellers only after years of harassment put on them by Federal agencies.

If you mean that you don't want condemnation, say it. Say it in logical terms that any citizen, any lawyer or any judge will clearly understand.

If you don't mean it, then use double-talk, use loopholes. There is more that we need to talk about on this particular issue.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time

I am very pleased to yield to the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Pearce) such time as he may consume.

If I could ask the gentleman from Arizona how many more speakers you have.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

As I said before, there are some significant issues that always take place on these particular types of bills. Indeed, there is no basic statutory structure for wild and scenic bills. They've gone all over the place, including the now infamous one in New Jersey, which I think was actually the last bill to go through during the last session.

These are the issues that we've talked about before which can, indeed, take place under wild and scenic areas where people do not have the right to fix their roof, do not have the right to expand their garage, do not have the right to clear areas on their own property. It is not just a possibility; it is actually a probability. There is precedent for all of those.

But once again, this isn't this key issue. We are willing to have 8 miles of scenic river in Connecticut. The key issue is defending those people in Connecticut and establishing a precedent that is significant the rest of the way.

It's not simply a matter of reading the bill; it's a matter of reading the law. The language of zoning requirement, which once again is a conditional one. You mentioned the Attorney General from the State of Connecticut wrote a letter and once again he said the act flatly prohibits use of eminent domain if, and once again that's the conditional language, if the lands are subject to local zoning laws that conform to the purposes of the act. And once again the date that these zoning laws should have been in effect, the zoning ordinances have already been changed from that particular date.

But the key element is that that zoning language, that willing seller language, is inserted into the existing bill and it comes directly after this sentence, and the sentence is very clear. Nothing contained in this section, which is everything we've been talking about in this bill, nothing contained in this section however, shall preclude the use of condemnation. Nothing that you add as far as zoning ordinances or willing sellers precludes the right the Secretary of Interior has in the rest of the bill and the rest of the section from condemnation, unless you simply adopt the Republican language, and that is why we hit over and over and over again on this issue.

It is important that we stand up for property rights and personal property. It's important that people have some sense of security and safety in their own homes. And this bill doesn't take away this provision of the act which says, nothing contained in this section shall preclude the use of condemnation. That is to which we object. That is the problem with this bill. That is what must change.

The Republican option was clear, simple and to the point. The Democrat option, whatever the motive was, is somewhat double-talk. It's a loophole. This language that we propose is very similar to what this body adopted by a voice vote with the Department of Interior appropriations bill.

And in conclusion, Madam Speaker, I'm actually sad that we had this bill before us at all. There is no reason this bill should be before us with a closed rule. I wish that the Democrats had moved in a bipartisan way to work with us to meet what are legitimate concerns. And if, indeed, protection of private property is a partisan issue, I'm more than happy to be on the side of private property. That's the right side to be on in this issue. This bill may indeed sometime become a metaphor for this entire section where we can see how much muscle can be flexed to push through issues rather than sitting down and trying to solve problems.

I truly hope that in the future we can work in a bipartisan way, that we can actually talk together to find language that is mutually acceptable to both sides of the aisle for these issues, because there's no reason that we should actually have to go through a closed rule on this type of a bill.

But the issue is simply black and white or yellow and black, I guess. Will you actually ensure, by taking the money away, there is no condemnation, or do you leave the language in the act? It's clear. It's understandable. It should be clear to our colleagues. It will be clear to our constituents and our voters.

Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, with the exception of 2 minutes, which I reserve for tomorrow.

Mr. Speaker, a couple of years ago I was in the position of the gentlewoman from Ohio managing some of the rules for the bills, and often I was chagrined and offended by people who would complain about amendments not being made in order when they had been fully vetted and defeated in the committee.

I want you to know as I rise to talk about one amendment that was not made in order, this is not necessarily the case. Even though I had offered it in committee, I withdrew it in the committee in the spirit of comity to try to work towards a solution for this floor, not realizing that the Rules Committee would callously deny all amendments made in order on this bill.

Reconciliation is already a procedural process that limits the right of the minority to have input. To further restrict their rights by not recognizing any amendments, and indeed taking out amendments that were passed in the full committee, is something that certainly is not the definition of open government.

The issue I wish to address I will continue to talk about because philosophically I think it is larger than the bill we are actually discussing. The Department of Education drafted the language I presented, not to say they endorsed it, but to let you know this was not a cavalier but a serious effort at solving a problem. In fact, the amendment was passed last year by this body in the Higher Ed Reauthorization Act, but was one of the bills that the Senate refused to accept or consider during the last year.

I want to publicly thank the subcommittee chairman, Mr. Kildee, for speaking to me about this amendment, Mr. McKeon, the ranking member, and his staff for talking to us at length about this amendment, and also the Department of Education.

To the full committee chairman I wish to apologize. Part of my process with these types of amendments is to sit down with the ranking member as well as the chairman to explain my purpose and intent. Six different times since the committee met, I have made an effort to try to meet with the chairman of the full committee and each time those efforts were rebuffed. So I apologize to him for not doing what I think should be the normal process.

The last time we did a reconciliation bill, there was a new entitlement that was inserted on the insistence of the Senate. That was the wrong process. But it did establish an increase in a new Pell Grant program which I like, and it required this Pell Grant to go to those who had a rigorous academic schedule, something else I like. But it also gave the Department of Education the right to establish criteria which would drive curricula. That is the part I cannot accept.

In the charter of the Education Department, it was forbidden for them to have this power. In Federal statutes, it is forbidden for them to have this power. State constitutions forbid it; yet this program has opened the door for future abuse.

In the committee it was asked: Shouldn't all States have common standards? To allow the Federal Government to establish those common standards gives the Federal Government power taken from parents and local school boards to drive curriculum decisions. It is almost like saying can't we be partially pregnant. No.

If the Department of Education has the ability to establish some curriculum decisions, they also have inherently the ability to establish all curriculum decisions, even though the current Department of Education is trying hard not to abuse this power by still saying there are four broad areas that qualify. They themselves have admitted that it needs to be refined. And what the future Department of Education without this same kind of approach would have simply meant that there can be abuse of the system in the future.

Most curriculums are always going to be driven, especially of electives, by a teacher. Other curriculum is driven by graduation requirements. But curriculum can also be driven by outside requirements. When the four colleges in Utah decided that students should have 2 years of foreign languages before they go to college, the enrollment in foreign language programs quadrupled. When the Federal Government can dangle out money for Pell Grants by taking specific classes, that will drive curriculum decisions, and it is philosophically wrong to give them that kind of power.

In this bill there is much good. Much of the good has already been stated in forms of hyperbole. There is also much bad.

In 2005 when this program to which I object was created, it was the wrong thing to do. This particular bill has nine different new entitlements which are also the wrong thing to do, so I am assuming this is probably about nine times as bad.

It is a poor and abusive procedure when we deny amendments on the floor and you deny amendments that were passed in committee and remove them without having the chance to address them again. So I will vote against this rule because it is an abuse of the procedure that unfairly limits the rights of the minority.

Mr. Chairman, the simple question I have is the picture of the polar bear that is down there, that is not, by any chance, new, is it?

Let me just say I appreciate the gentleman representing this picture of a polar bear. It's not Knut. Knut, of course, is the infamous polar bear cub the animal rights groups who support this amendment wanted the Berlin Zoo to kill as opposed to allow it to live in captivity. I'm glad it's not the same one.

This amendment does nothing to preserve polar bears. It's not about preservation, especially when it cuts conservation funds in the process.

Mr. Chairman, the first chart that will eventually come up here, and I am sorry about this, indicates the States in the United States that have the hardest time increasing their education funding. This is where the funding is growing the slowest.

You notice the common denominator with these is not an attitude towards education, it is that most of these are land-based States. The land has been taken away from us to develop a property tax base. Fortunately, God has given us resources underneath that to compensate for that. But any program that would retard the leases or the royalties that will come from those will harm education in Western States.

My kids in Utah will be put at a disadvantage because of this particular amendment. There is collateral damage that takes place with amendments, and one of those deals with education.

If you can look at this chart in the proper way, this chart shows the salaries that are given for first-year teachers in Wyoming versus the salaries on average for fourth-year teachers in Montana. Now, this should not be that way, because Montana has the fewest amount of public lands of any of the Western States. They have more of a property tax base. The difference is Wyoming has the resources that they have developed, which allows them simply to put more money into their education system.

My colleagues who are still teachers deserve a decent salary, they deserve a decent retirement, we deserve the right to build our public schools. When you ask anything that shackles them from a brighter future, either by postponing or forcing to replow the data that the professional land managers have already established, it harms them.

You have taken away our land for property tax benefits. Allow us to develop the resources so that we can have

a future for education in the Western States that is on par with those in the Eastern States. It is important that we move forward. And I'm sorry, but there is collateral damage with this amendment that harms educators and education in the West.

Madam Chair, I move to strike the last word.

One of the issues that we are dealing with this in this particular budget deals with the question that we have that deals with both immigration as well as the processes of that immigration. We are talking this time about immigration, and the devastating impact that it has.

One of the things we missed is the impact on land of immigration. Our land managers have documented, pleaded their efforts before and in the past on some of the problems that we seem to be facing with immigration. We have illegal trails that are going across the desert that are leading to erosion. Literally our resources are being washed away.

Where that is not happening, trash is being left behind by illegal border crossers. We are talking about plastic bottles, shoes, cars, even vehicles at some times. That is not necessarily the habitat of endangered species. We seem to be having devastating fires taking place started by abandoned camps.

Even last week, 1,900 acres in the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge was burned, and it is believed that its was started by illegal immigration cooking fire. The Coronado National Forest, in testimony last year before the Appropriations Committee, has 60 miles of contiguous border with the Mexican border. In this national forest, there are 12 separate rangers, eight wilderness areas, 203 threatened and endangered sensitive species, and the staff said that the resources are suffering significant adverse impacts due to illegal border traffic. Even livestock and closure fences, meant to try to separate livestock from endangered species, are being torn down.

Probably the most specific and egregious of all those examples is given by the National Park Service. The Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, one-third of that monument is closed to visitors because of the threats of assault by AK-47-packing drug runners is too great. Land managers and biologists responsible for the park must be escorted by armed personnel to do their work in the park.

If we had machine-gun toting bandits or terrorists walking through Yellowstone or Yosemite, we would not tolerate that. But that is the reality that we have today, and the land managers are asking for tools to do their job.

That, indeed, is an issue of significance that needed to be addressed in this particular bill. Perhaps at some point in the future we can actually address that particular issue and that difficult problem and see if we can move forward to a resolution of that and establish priorities that we want to have border security and the impact, the negative impact it's having on public lands, we need to make sure that we move forward as a government to stop that and suppress that.

I will be happy to yield to the ranking member.

Madam Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Madam Chair, we just mentioned a few things that are significant to this particular issue and tried to mention some of the important points that we are making. We need greater control on the Park Service and BLM land on our border areas that is being devastated by illegal border crossing.

The amendment that I am proposing goes directly to that goal and that purpose by committing $30 million towards law enforcement activities. Actually, it's $31.5 million toward law enforcement activities by agencies who are on our southern border.

We, as a government, have a responsibility to prevent illegal border crossings. We also have a responsibility for land managers to be managing the land in that particular area.

Now, this amendment that I have does move money around. I feel sorry for that. The particular area in which I am transferring the money is something that bothers me personally.

I met my wife during a community theater. When I was in the legislature in Utah, I was the one that instituted a percent for the art programs so that 1 percent of all our construction monies went for arts to be considered. I have been a supporter of the Utah Arts Council.

I also think it's appropriate that local dollars fund art programs so that local control can be there on the process level.

With this particular amendment, it still leaves a $4 million, $4.5 million, roughly $4 million increase in the National Endowment for the Arts over last year's funding base, so there still is an increase. But in addition to that increase, there is $30 million that will go to enforcement of our borders, enforcement of our borders that is necessary to protect the land that is there. It is a matter of priority.

Now, CBO has scored this one. I'm convinced there is probably no PAYGO efforts, but that may be one of the issues we want to talk about. But the bottom line is still this: We need to prioritize what we're doing with this budget. And this is a tremendous area that has been de- emphasized and needs to be re-emphasized. And I contend that this is the appropriate way to put that emphasis there.

Point of Order

Madam Chairman, I offer an amendment.

One of the issues with which we struggle in this legislature deals with simply the concept of prioritization. And what I'm talking about in this particular issue is money put into the budget above and beyond what the President recommended, but money put into this budget for new acquisitions, not taking care of what we already have, but new acquisitions.

Now, I'm going to contend here that what we need to do is prioritize so that what we do is put our money in what we already have and make sure that we are doing the best we have with our parks and public lands.

I have a picture right here of a facility that's not in my district, but it is in my State. Dinosaur National Monument is actually in the Second District of Utah. This particular facility is a beautiful facility. I was there before it was condemned. I was there. So you could go in there with all my kids and look at the dinosaur bones that are still in place in the mountainside as it has been scraped away so you can see the prehistoric history of this country. It's a wonderful place. It is a wonderful exhibit. It's a great learning experience, all of which has been closed because this building has been condemned and we don't have enough money to fix the facility.

This facility should be fixed before we put 17 million new dollars into new programs somewhere else. This facility should be fixed before we expand what we are trying to do. We need to take care of what we have already identified as important and significant and make sure it takes place.

And that, my fellow Members of this House, is the reason I'm proposing this amendment, that we simply reprioritize to do what's most important, and we fix what we have first and make

sure that is functioning before we put any new additional money into acquisition of new land, new properties and new proposals.

Madam Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Madam Chairman, I appreciate the opportunity of just saying a word on this particular amendment. I am also very grateful to both the ranking member as well as the chairman of the subcommittee for understanding the significance of this important amendment.

Let me say that this is another map that is similar to the one that was already done, except this time I chose the blue color. Everything that is in blue is the amount of land owned and controlled by the Federal Government in each State. You will notice that there is a proclivity of this kind of blue color in the West.

Some of those that don't live in the West don't really understand what the significance or the problem is in dealing with the Federal Government on so much particular land.

I also want you to know that this was not necessarily the way it was supposed to be. When every one of these Western States entered the Union, their enabling act said the land would go to the Federal Government until such time as it shall be disposed and each State was supposed to get a cut of the amount of money gotten by the Federal Government. So this is not the way it was supposed to be.

But it was changed in the 1970s when the Federal Land Management Policy Act was produced. The trade-off in that was for Payment in Lieu of Taxes. So this land would be compensated, in exchange for the Federal Government keeping those lands, without having to go back through the States to deal with it.

Now, we would actually be more happy if we had all the lands. If indeed these Western States that have their lands controlled by the Federal Government could tax them at even the cheapest open value space, this is the amount of money that we would be able to accommodate for ourselves and solve our own problems.

This bill has $232 million for PILT, Payment in Lieu of Taxes right now. So you look at it. If Idaho was simply able to put a tax on the Federal land in their State, they would create more than that money by themselves. Utah could get $116 million every year by ourselves, Nevada $118 million every year by themselves; and that is only for public education. It would be even more for general taxes. So the States could actually handle it themselves.

What I am trying to say is I appreciate everyone finally realizing that PILT money is not free, it is not loans, it is simply not welfare for the West. It is money that was really owed to these particular States and that our goal should not be simply the $22 million more in this particular amendment, but to fully fund PILT, which should be $375 million in the first place, or allow the States to have the flexibility to actually go after the true value of these types of lands that happen to be there.

So I appreciate everyone recognizing the significance of this, and I appreciate everyone realizing that this is money that is owed to the States so they can control and they can actually pay for the services they have to provide, even though they don't have the land resources to deal with it.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, to paraphrase the misquote of one of my heroes, Yogi Berra, this is ``deja vu all over again,'' this actually was the substance of an amendment that was offered earlier this morning. It was repealed because the numbers did not actually meet the necessities of some of our requirement. This now comes back to you with new numbers in there that I think will meet the necessity of the requirements for our accounting system that happens to be there.

We did, obviously this morning, talk about the extreme necessity of dealing with border security with our public land system. We talked a lot about immigration, but we don't also indicate how this plays a part with our public lands.

We talked about the 1,900 acres that was burned. We suspect it was coming from a campfire by illegals. The gentleman from Iowa has used some of my pictures to show the amount of trash that was left behind in this critical habitat area, once again by illegal immigrants. We have talked about areas in which it is unsafe. One-third of the national monument has been closed down because it is unsafe to go in there by the Park Service personnel without armed guards accompanying them.

In testimony given to the Appropriations Committee, I know last year and perhaps it was replicated again this year, there was a discussion about the national forest area along the 60 miles contiguous with the Mexican border known as the Coronado National Forest. Once again, it has 12 different mountain systems, 203 threatened and endangered and sensitive species, eight wilderness areas that are in this particular area, and they were literally begging for the resources sufficient to address the adverse impact due to illegal border traffic. That is what this amendment tries to do.

I appreciate earlier this morning the many comments, especially from the ranking member, of how significant this issue actually is. It is true we are moving money from a program, in this case, the National Endowment For the Arts, to border security. I would point out that we are not taking, as some amendments have and I am certainly not proposing that, all of the money from NEA to move into helping with border security. We are still leaving a $4 million increase above and beyond what was last year in the appropriated budget for the NEA. So we are trying to do that. Even though this program hasn't been reauthorized since 1992, we are still allowing that type of an increase.

But what our comment is basically saying is whenever we have these budgets, we have to make some kind of prioritization. And my contention is that the committee misprioritized when they put some money opposite others and that this has a higher and more significant need at this particular time.

Perhaps if we were starting over again, both these programs could be funded adequately. But at this stage of the game, there are only certain pots from which the money can be taken,

and I still think that this is the effective way of making sure there is still an increase, once again to a program that hasn't been reauthorized since 1992, and at the same time putting a significant amount of resources to our land managers who desperately need those resources to do their job in protecting our southern borders and protecting the land that we have set aside for its sensitive nature and its specific qualities. That has to be there.

With that, Mr. Chairman, that is the specific element of this particular amendment, to try to reprioritize to meet the needs of our southern border, which at this time, when we are talking about immigration, is such a significant issue.

Mr. Chairman, I do have a request before you actually officially announce the voice vote. Does this UC prohibit me from making a request for a recorded vote?

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, in my short time as the ranking member on the Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands, I have already heard a number of stories from property owners who have been threatened or bullied with the hammer of eminent domain. Thousands of acres each year are taken from private citizens and against their will in order to expand our national parks and our national forests. This is done in spite of the fact that the Federal Government has so much land it cannot possibly manage what it already has.

Landowners, when faced with the possibility of a long, protracted war against bureaucrats, land managers and legions of Federal lawyers, often choose simply to walk away. What is most outrageous then is the fact that these people are then labeled by us as willing sellers.

This has happened to landowners across our Nation. We've had examples from people living near the Everglades in Florida, to the Cape Cod National Seashore in Massachusetts, to Voyageurs National Park in Minnesota, just a few places where there has been, in my estimation, egregious abuse by the Federal Government.

I have letters from a family in Maine who endured 20 years in a battle with the Federal Government. They wrote that the negotiations between my family and the Park Service over what could have been a simple land donation exceeded 20 years and had a serious, long-term detrimental effect on my family, the ski area they owned, the surrounding community. Eventually, after millions of dollars were lost and countless hours of time from high-ranking State and Federal officials were consumed, strained professional careers of an entire at- risk community and the negative health and financial repercussions of my family members, this issue was finally resolved. For now.

Here is another example of a Franciscan friar who talked about the threats of eminent domain that hanged over his ministry for years and years and years. In his words, again, simply over 118 acres of the friar's property: We offered the National Park Service the opportunity to switch back the trail to the original setting, so that not only the trail could be maintained, but there would be a natural environment for it. But the National Park Service refused this option and threatened to proceed with eminent domain. There is no reason that that friar and his ministry should have had that hanging over his head for years and years and years.

Mr. Chairman, the Secretary of Interior has the power in statute for using this hammer of eminent domain. Even today, when we do authorization bills, we don't even have the sense to try and limit that kind of authority or power. Even in those situations where it is clearly said in the testimony and in the hearings that they do not want to use eminent domain, we do nothing to try and stop that potential authority. If we really say that we don't want to use eminent domain to acquire these lands, we ought as well use the logical step of saying so.

In light of the Kelo decision, so many people are now aware of the potential abuse by government entities on private property through the use of eminent domain, now is the time for us clearly to say that private property is important, and it should be respected by the Federal Government. That's exactly what this amendment tries to do, is to clarify that we do respect private property; we respect it, and we will not use eminent domain to take land away from private citizens.

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

Mr. Chairman, I ask for a recorded vote on that last motion.

Let me try one thing here. I will ask under unanimous consent.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, there is something that is happening in the Department of Interior that is disturbing. So-called nonprofits, many of them financed by wealthy individuals, are lining up with their hands extended, requesting and accepting government handouts in the form of grants.

Then what do these nonprofits do with the taxpayers' money? They come back and they sue the same agents that wrote them a check.

At the same time, these 501(c)(3)s complain that the agencies are then underfunded. Now it's difficult to see how land management agencies are ever going to have enough money to take care of their responsibilities and appease the nonprofits when a good chunk of their budget is siphoned off yearly by defending themselves against endless lawsuits.

501(c)(3)s have a great system. It's a very efficient business model for them. It does defy logic except in what we call the bureaucracy of the Federal Government. These nonprofits bite the hand that feeds them, and the hand simply can't stop itself from feeding them even more. After biting the hand, they then go out and find more money to continue the assault, line their pockets, all along touting their advocacies on behalf of the hand they had just bitten.

My amendment provides a potential remedy to this disturbing and increasing trend. It would prohibit funds in this bill from being dispersed to 501(c)(3)s that are party to litigation against the dispensing agency. In other words, if you are suing the Department of the Interior, you are not eligible to receive money from the Department of the Interior.

I believe, as everyone does, in the right to sue, but it defies logic that we would ask taxpayers to finance litigation against themselves. The taxpayer ends up paying twice, first in the form of the handouts to the nonprofit, and then when the government's attorney needs to be paid for defending it.

Keep in mind, this also diverts money from critical needs on our public land. The maintenance backlog on our lands is well documented, reaches into billions of dollars, and we can't even say the taxpayers are even hit a third time when they try to access these multiple-use public lands only to find out that the particular activity is currently off limits due to ongoing litigation brought on by so-called nonprofit advocacy groups generously financed by the taxpayers.

Now some may say that there are legitimate reasons to take the government to court. I would agree with that statement. But I would not agree that it's the government's responsibility to fund that complaint, especially the same government entity you are at the same time suing.

This amendment is very simple. If a nonprofit organization can afford to finance elaborate fundraising campaigns to enrich themselves, certainly they can afford to sue the government on their own dime. Don't let these organizations sell you underchronic underfunding of agency X, Y and Z when they, themselves, are draining that agency from resources by the millions. This two-faced scheme must be stopped. It's time for us to show the taxpayers some respect and stop playing this type of a game with their money.

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

Mr. Speaker, it is this time as we end a week of discussion and debate and we all leave to reconnect with our constituents and find out from the real people of America what we have actually done here that we have a time to sit back and contemplate the significant questions that will be brought to us next week, probably the greatest of which is simply will the Republicans continue to win the congressional baseball game.

But at this time in this weekend, I am joined tonight by Congressman Garrett of New Jersey, who is the Chairman of the Constitutional Caucus, who wisely thought that this would be a good time for us to take a

moment and discuss once again the significance and importance of the Constitution as we come to this end of this section of our legislative year.

You know, Mr. Speaker, the Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia once said he understood there were those people who believe that there should not be a strict adherence to the words or intent of the words of the Constitution. But, he wrote, you would have to be an idiot to believe that.

The Constitution is not a living organism. It is a legal document. It says some things and doesn't say other things. The Constitution is a piece of paper that has words, but each of those words have a meaning.

I was once watching an episode of Fawlty Towers, obviously a very old one, and it is one in which John Cleese is trying in vain to talk to his waiter Manuel from Barcelona, who doesn't speak English very well, and in contempt he finally walks away and says, ``Say Goodnight, Gracie.''

Now, my students in school never understood what that line, ``Say Goodnight, Gracie,'' meant. As I was talking to them or other audiences, you would have to be around my age to remember the old George Burns and Gracie Allen routines in which every tagline of one of their routines was simply, ``Say Goodnight, Gracie,'' which had the effect of implying that Gracie Allen was probably the most ditziest, dumbest blonde ever produced.

Now, oddly enough, my students understood the phrase ``dumb blond.'' They don't understand the phrase, ``Say Goodnight, Gracie.''

We all have certain cue words which create larger meanings in the mind of the hearer. Those words have meaning based on the usage of time. The Founding Fathers who wrote the Constitution also had cue words that they used to expand the meaning of what they meant.

One of the things I am happy about is the academic community seems of late to take a great deal more interest in the words of the Constitution and defining and understanding what they actually meant at the time.

I had a college professor who used to say the Founding Fathers had baggage that they took with them, which meant there were common concepts they brought together and they understood.

One of them, for example, is they all had read and understood Aristotle. Aristotle loved to divide everything up into categories. He divided up governments into a category of the government of one, a government of the few, a government of the many, and he said that each of those breakdowns could have a government that is good or bad, simply depending on the attitude of the ruling group. And he gave them all names. A government of one, for example, that he said was good, he defined as a monarchy. So in the 1780s, if you claimed someone was a monarch, that was a compliment.

The government of one that was bad that had bad intentions, he gave the term of a tyrant or a tyranny. It is not a coincidence that a decade earlier when Thomas Jefferson is writing the Declaration of Independence, that of all the terms he can use to describe King George, he used the word ``tyrant.'' It had a cue meaning to it which ticked up a whole bunch of other ideas in the mind of the reader or the hearer.

It is the same way when the Federalists decided to criticize Jefferson, they called him a Jacobite. You cannot understand the significance of that insult unless you have a deeper understanding of the meaning of what happened in the French Revolution. The words have specific meanings and specific attitudes.

Akhil Amar wrote a wonderful book exploring the historical context of the words used in the Constitution. Much of what I am going to say is based on many of his works and his research. I would like to take just the preamble of the Constitution to try and illustrate what that is talk about.

You see, I thought Gouverneur Morris and the committee who wrote the Preamble to the Constitution at the very end of the Constitutional Convention were merely putting something in there to add some kind of literary flair to the document itself. And even though these words don't have the same status as statute, these majestic words give us a window to see into the minds of those who actually framed our republican form of government.

It starts off with the phrase ``We the people of the United States.'' Now, whether intentional or not, it began with the concept of empowering people. And earlier drafts started off with ``We the people of,'' and then it listed each and every individual State. Politically, that would have been unwise if indeed one of those states had eventually not ratified the document, which they thought could easily happen, because, after all, Rhode Island wasn't even there.

But by changing it to ``We the people of the United States,'' it is more than just a political maneuver, it is a fundamental mindset of the Convention delegates. This Constitution goes full circle. It starts off by talking about the people and ends with Article 7, which is a new way of ratifying the constitutional document, which is a relatively contemporary concept of having a ratifying convention elected by the people. A new concept of republican democracy.

So this document starts and ends with the commitment to the faith in the people. The Constitution doesn't pander to governments, but rather is aimed at empowering the people of this United States who indeed empower this government at the same time.

The Founding Fathers never intended to amend the Articles of Confederation. They realized to do so would take unanimous consent, and since Rhode Island wasn't there in fact it would never happen. In fact, 2 years earlier New York had vetoed a new financial management amendment. That act in and of itself had done much to spur the call for a new Convention to try and solve the problem. Because the Articles of Convention truly was a treaty between sovereign states and the national government.

This was something that was going to be different. It was going to be different to solve the problem by forming a more perfect union.

Now, once again, I always thought that the phrase ``in order to form a more perfect union'' was simply in opposition to the less perfect union under the Articles of Confederation. But it meant something so much more than that. It implied that they were leaving the treaty to join the new supreme law of the land. And ratification specifically denoted leaving the commitment of a flawed treaty to a commitment of a new supreme law of the land.

The anti-Federalists got that point. They debated it. They lost the argument. They lost the vote. Confederates did not get that in the Civil War time.

Abraham Lincoln actually was wrong about it as well. When he gave the Gettysburg Address, he talked about an indivisible Nation that started four score and seven years ago. That was a reference back to 1776 and the Declaration of Independence. To be accurate, he should have said three score and 15 years ago was when we became an individual nation, because that was the ratification of the Constitution of the United States.

There is more to that phrase that Gouverneur Morris meant than simply glossing over once again. This phrase, ``a more perfect union,'' is a specific reference to the 1707 Act of Unification between England and Scotland. The words say ``the union of two kingdoms more active and complete.'' In fact Queen Anne referred to it all the time as her ``more perfect union.''

You see, the attitude of the mindset at the time was they believed the progeny of landed borders was always armies. So they looked at the time when England, Scotland and even Wales were individual countries with land borders and each had an army to offset the other, which meant eventually they would use that army one against the other, and if they were not using it to disturb the peace of the island, than a tyrannical king was probably using it to destroy the liberties of his individual people.

Once they formed the more perfect union of England, Scotland and Wales together, the relative quiet of the United Kingdom was in contrast as they looked across the English Channel to Europe, which still had individual borders and was still engaged in border wars and subjection of the individual liberties of their individual citizens.

So what we consider to be incomprehensible, the idea that Massachusetts might raise an army for some of their indigenous people, and that New York

would respond by raising an Army just in case Massachusetts doesn't stay with their own indigenous people, and Virginia might raise an army then because all three of them claim the same lands in the West. What we thought of as incomprehensible was an actual fear at the time.

And they had an option, they will had an option of either eliminating that, or becoming like Europe. They could either be like Europe, with multiple boundaries and all the problems associated with it, or become like the United Kingdom in a more perfect union, eliminating that threat for evermore. And, more significantly, not just bringing peace to the continent, but also providing the protection and preservation of the individual liberties.

It is significant the Founding Fathers had a fear of armies. They limited the army to two years. It had to be dissolved. They didn't do the same thing to navies, because a navy boat could not chase you down the street and beat you up--Armies could. The idea of a citizen army is something that comes about in the French Revolution. That hasn't happened for a decade yet.

So armies at this time were mercenaries who were not necessarily sympathetic to the people they were supposed to be defending. In fact, the British army that came over here to defeat us and defend the British was actually hired Germans.

So the idea in here was an Army was not necessarily nice to people. The militia were the citizens, and those were the ones who were going to be important. Armies were foreigners. Militias were your neighbors. Giving primarily defense of the country to a militia made sense. Allowing a militia, in reality the people, to be armed made sense. An armed citizenry as a check to a potential political abuse made sense. Thinking of the modern National Guard as the same as a 1788 militia when we talk about the Second Amendment makes no sense because we don't understand the meaning of the words.

Lincoln also understood this concept of more perfect union when he talked about the Civil War. If the South was successful, even though this was a horrible war, at a high cost and greatly criticized by the intelligentsia at the time, he predicted that if the Civil War was successful for the South, it would not be the Civil War that created the South, but the beginning in a series of wars between the North and the South over regional boundaries and regional issues.

This Constitution also establishes justice. The Founding Fathers considered justice lacking on both the national and the State level, and they invented the checks and balances system of Federalism to counteract that.

If we truly understand what it means to establish justice, we have to understand the Framers hope to curb the excesses of the State governments, just the way patriots today have to curb the excesses of our national government. So Federalism means we forget the concept of establishing justice.

``To ensure domestic tranquility'' was not only a reference to Shay's Rebellion, but was also the concept that Revolutionary War veterans marched on Philadelphia to get their money from the Articles of Confederation Congress and both Philadelphia and Pennsylvania refused to provide protection, one is of the reasons they insisted on having this place, a Federal District, so they could ensure the domestic tranquility.

And the next phrase is ``to promote the general welfare.'' Mr. Speaker, at this time we sometimes have a combination, I think, or conception, conception today, that promoting the general welfare is a door to open up to national involvement in all sorts of areas.

I think if you look at the actual words, it was quite the opposite. ``General welfare'' was a term of limiting qualifications, not expanding them.

With that in mind at this stage of the preamble, I would like to yield to the Chairman of the Constitutional Caucus, the good gentleman from New Jersey, Mr. Garrett, to talk about the concept of promoting general welfare.

I appreciate being able to put the phrase, ``promoting the general welfare,'' into a constitutional perspective, as well as a historical perspective. It is true that Madison and Monroe, both as Presidents, vetoed road construction projects because they only benefited the vicinity of the road, not the general welfare.

It's true that the City of Savannah suffered a horrendous fire; and even though people wanted to give money for it, the rebuilding of Savannah, Congress refused because it wasn't the general welfare.

Obviously, as Mr. Garrett has said, starting with the New Deal era, we changed our view of what these words mean, so that most times, most politicians today just assume Federal involvement is exactly what was intended.

It also says that when these guys wrote the elastic clause of article I, section 8, they must have had a vastly different and a much more limited view on what was the power entailed than modern policymakers or scholars do.

The last phrase of the preamble is that we do ordain and establish. It's an appropriate benediction to the preamble. It's a phrase that brought to the 1780 mind the creation found in the Book of Genesis, for religious vocabulary at the time spoke of God ordaining and creating the Earth, as comparison to the Founding Fathers who ordained and established this new government. These men in a very real and reverent sense created a new country.

We pass laws almost every week that we either make incorrect assumptions about the meaning of the Founders' words, or we simply ignore them as no longer relevant to our time.

Justice Scalia also once again said about the Constitution: ``What it meant when it was adopted it means today, and its meaning doesn't change just because we think that meaning is no longer adequate to our times.''

My students not understanding ``Say goodnight, Gracie'' was simply an annoyance, excusable because they're young, and their view is a tennis player trying to decide whether to date a 20-year-old or a 40-year-old is great television. But for Congress not to understand the meaning of the words of the Constitution is irresponsible, it's inexcusable, and it's dangerous.

Let me yield to one last comment to the chairman of the Constitution Caucus.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks on the subject of this Special Order.