Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I was absent during rollcall votes 620, 621, 622 and 623. Had I been present, I would have voted ``aye'' on 620, 621, 622 and 623.

Mr. Speaker, I point out to the body and the American people that the President had made an excellent nomination in the name of Miguel Estrada. And for 28 months Mr. Estrada was held in limbo while we waited for the Constitution to be upheld in the other body. And that would be the advise and consent clause of the Constitution that establishes that the Senate shall confirm the President's nominees.

Now that 28 months and 5 days have passed, Mr. Estrada determined he needed to move on with his life. But the rules in the other body that establish a 60 percent vote to end a filibuster, have effectively established that standard as a requirement for a confirmation of a justice.

And now today, and as I read some of the publications that are out, I am heartened to learn that through the newspapers that the other body is planning to debate judicial nominations starting on Wednesday evening of this week. They pledge to debate the issue all night to get their message to the American people. I applaud them in their endeavor, and I will do all I can to support their efforts.

The blockage of judicial nominations by a determined minority is one of the most important issues before our Nation. Nothing less than our Constitution is at stake. I believe the Constitution is clear: a minority cannot impose a supermajority requirement for confirmation of a judicial nominee. The President is entitled to confirmation of his nominees if they garner a simple majority.

The advise and consent clause, which is article II, section 2 of the United States Constitution requires a simple majority of 51 votes for confirmation of a judicial nominee. Many nominees have 51 such votes. And that standard is the standard that has existed since the ratification of our Constitution in 1789, well over 200 years. But there is a new standard now, brought about by the minority. I firmly believe that it is unconstitutional to require a higher standard.

announcement by the speaker pro tempore

Mr. Speaker, I firmly believe that it is unconstitutional to require a higher standard for nominees than the simple majority specified in our Constitution. Janice Rogers Brown, Carolyn Kuhl, Charles Pickering, William Pryor, and Priscilla Owen, who are all waiting to be confirmed, deserve an up-or-down vote.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to bring attention to the House of a few of these well-qualified nominees. Janice Rogers Brown.

announcement by the speaker pro tempore

Mr. Speaker, I will adhere to that directive. I will say these are reliable people. And in the case of Janice Rogers Brown, she is a classic American success story. She is a daughter of an Alabama sharecropper who became a member of the California Supreme Court. She was reelected to the Supreme Court by 76 percent, which was the largest margin of any justice running that year. More importantly, she is a well-qualified and excellent judge. She applies the law without bias and with an even hand.

William Pryor, another nominee, has a model judicial temperament. As attorney general, Pryor has demonstrated an ability to make decisions in full compliance with the letter of existing law, despite his own personal beliefs or preference. Even while Pryor personally opposed abortion, he has faithfully applied the Supreme Court's rulings on partial birth abortion and instructed Alabama officials not to enforce the State's partial birth abortion ban in a way that would violate the case law. It is clear that William Pryor would interpret the law, not make the law from the bench.

Mr. Speaker, I hope the American people will support this endeavor.

I hope the American people will listen next week when the qualifications of nominees such as William Pryor, Janice Rogers Brown and others are debated by the other body. At issue is one of the most important Constitutional questions of our time. Will the Constitution be upheld? Or will a determined minority be allowed to thwart the clear text of the Constitituion and the will of the American people?

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the remarks of the gentleman from Arizona. What we are really talking about here is means testing versus entitlement. Means testing says, we do not want to tax poor people to put drugs and Medicare into the accounts of Bill Gates. And entitlement means, we are going to do that for everybody so we can level this across all classes of people in America. That is not the American way. We do not do things like that. We are here for the underdog, and that is what means testing does. It protects this system for the poorest among us.

If we listen to some of the discussions about Social Security reform, we will hear, raise the age, lower the benefits, increase the contribution. All of those things are part of what happens if we do not provide for means testing, because then we have to draw it out of the pockets of the working people.

I am from Iowa. In Iowa we pay attention to Medicare. We are last in the Nation in compensation rates where I come from. I represent a district that has 10 of the 12 most senior counties in Iowa, and in Iowa we have the highest percentage of our population over the age of 65. We are extraordinarily sensitive to providing these resources to people who need it.

When I came here to this Congress, I pledged to support a prescription drug Medicare plan that was means tested and also provided for the reform in Medicare so that we could utilize those dollars in the most effective way possible and penalize the producers in this country the minimum amount possible. We do not have that in what is appearing to come together before our conference committee. I rise in support of the Flake motion to instruct for that reason, so that we can promote means testing and impose the idea of this entitlement, which weighs down this system.

So how did we get here? Two years of expectations raised by the Congress that said we are going to do prescription drugs. That brought us to this point. Then we set this number up on the wall that said $400 billion, then began to write prescription drugs-Medicare that hit that $400 million target. Really, the actuaries drove a lot of this policy, and it does not appear to resemble the things that I came here to support.

So I am for reform. There are places in this country where they get more money for Medicare compensation than they need and they use that to buy down insurance premiums in private payers in places in this country where they get substantially less, and Iowa is one of those. We are not addressing quality care or cost effectiveness. In an effective way, our $400 billion plan is about 25 to $27 billion worth of reform, and the balance of it is prescription drugs because it is an entitlement.

Mr. Speaker, I think the Flake motion goes directly to the heart of this, and to carry this philosophy into the conference committee and bring it out and bring it out to the floor with really the right thing for the right philosophy for Americans is the thing that we ought to do.

Offered By: Mr. King of Iowa

Amendment No. 1: Page 107, after line 18, insert the

following (and redesignate subsequent sections, and conform

the table of contents of the bill, accordingly):

Mr. Speaker, I rise to congratulate Ms. Joanne Stockdale on the great honor of being named Iowa Small Business Person of the Year by the Small Business Administration. It is because of the excellent reputation that she established since purchasing Northern Iowa Die Casting, Inc. in 1984, that she deserves this recognition. Small businesses are the backbone of Iowa's economy, and it takes true entrepreneurial spirit and determination to ride economic waves in order to remain successful. It is to her credit that Northern Iowa Die Casting, Inc. has grown from six to 100 employees, with sales soaring from $225,000 to $10 million. She is to be commended for bringing jobs and commerce to Lake Park, Iowa.

I also recognize her for the great honor of representing Iowa small business at the National Entrepreneurial Conference and Expo held this week in Washington, D.C., while competing for the national Small Business Person of the Year Award.

As a small business owner for 28 years, I have great personal appreciation for both the struggles she faces and the joys of seeing the fruits of her labor. Since arriving at the U.S. Congress in January, I have made small business a legislative priority, and my work on the Small Business Committee has already enabled me to assist in creating legislation that will help small business leaders like Joanne Stockdale.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to congratulate Ms. Joanne Stockdale on the great honor of being named Iowa Small Business Person of the Year by the Small Business Administration. It is because of the excellent reputation that she established since purchasing Northern Iowa Die Casting, Inc. in 1984, that she deserves this recognition. Small businesses are the backbone of Iowa's economy, and it takes true entrepreneurial spirit and determination to ride economic waves in order to remain successful. It is to her credit that Northern Iowa Die Casting, Inc. has grown from six to 100 employees, with sales soaring from $225,000 to $10 million. She is to be commended for bringing jobs and commerce to Lake Park, Iowa.

I also recognize her for the great honor of representing Iowa small business at the National Entrepreneurial Conference and Expo held this week in Washington, D.C., while competing for the national Small Business Person of the Year Award.

As a small business owner for 28 years, I have great personal appreciation for both the struggles she faces and the joys of seeing the fruits of her labor. Since arriving at the U.S. Congress in January, I have made small business a legislative priority, and my work on the Small Business Committee has already enabled me to assist in creating legislation that will help small business leaders like Joanne Stockdale.

Mr. Chairman, I would have amended H.R. 2989, the Transportation, Treasury and Independent Agencies Appropriations Act of 2004, to address concerns about an unfunded mandate and ensure integrity in our voting system. However, this amendment was not in order. My amendment would have given States a waiver from compliance with the Help America Vote Act until it is fully funded at the authorized level. States should not have to comply with an unfunded mandate in 2006. Many of our states are facing serious budget crises, and worry that if they are not first in line to receive the federal matching funds the money will run out. If this happens, the local taxpayers will be left holding the bill for compliance with the unfunded HAVA mandate in 2006. My amendment would not require states to comply with the HAVA mandate until it is fully funded at the level authorized.

The Help America Vote Act of 2002 requires, among other things, that each precinct have at least one Direct Recording Electronic voting system, or DRE. However, currently these machines do not have a permanent, auditable and individually verifiable trail. Questions remain about whether electronic voting

system software could be hacked into and election results tampered with. Until DRE machines have a verifiable audit trail, we should not spend federal tax dollars on unreliable machines. The Help America Vote Act was motivated by electoral integrity--we must insure that the DRE machines meet that goal before spending millions of dollars on them and requiring states to use them in every precinct. At a cost of $4,000 to 5,000 per DRE, we can't afford to be wrong.

In fact, at a cost of thousands of dollars per machine, many rural precincts will have only one voting machine available for voters, and it will have to be a DRE according to the requirements of the Help America Vote Act. If sparsely populated rural voters are forced to vote on DRE machines that are susceptible to fraud, we risk mass disenfranchisement of rural voters in small precincts. This disenfranchisement will extend to disabled voters who use a DRE to vote, which was hardly the intent behind the voting reform legislation.

Ensuring electoral integrity and preventing vote fraud is a high priority for me. Although I was not able to offer my amendment today, I intend to continue to work towards solutions to these problems.

Offered By: Mr. King of Iowa

Amendment No. 11: Page 106, insert after line 4 the

following:

Sec. 511. (a) Section 301(d) of the Help America Vote Act

of 2002 (42 U.S.C. 15481(d)) is amended by striking the

period at the end and inserting the following: ``, or January

1 of the first calendar year which begins after the fiscal

year during which the aggregate amount appropriated for all

fiscal years for requirements payments under subtitle D of

title II is equal to or greater than $3,000,000,000,

whichever is later.''.

(b) None of the funds appropriated in this Act for

requirements payments under subtitle D of title II of the

Help America Vote Act of 2002 may be used to obtain any

voting system which is not capable of providing a permanent,

auditable, and individually verifiable paper record of each

vote cast on the system.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of both resolutions, H.R. 2738 and H.R. 2739, the Chilean and Singapore Free Trade Agreements.

The U.S.-Singapore and -Chile agreements will help a wide range of U.S. businesses, including manufacturers, service providers and farmers to get back into the game on international trade. This Free Trade Agreement also raises the bar for the Free Trade Area of the Americas. Implementing the Free Trade Agreement with Chile, the leading economic reformer in Latin America, sends a message to other countries taking part in the Free Trade Agreement negotiations that the U.S. is prepared to improve trade relations with countries that stay on the path of economic reform, free markets, and democracy.

U.S. agriculture needs trade agreements in order to obtain the global market access necessary to expand sales and farm incomes. Since 96 percent of the world's population resides outside the United States, access to foreign markets is essential for the continued growth and viability of U.S. agriculture. Bilateral agreements such as the Singapore and the Chile Free Trade Agreements are essential, because they provide benefits immediately. They help the U.S. keep pace with global competitors who currently have better access than U.S. exporters due to existing preferential trade agreements. This agreement is comprehensive, calling for an eventual duty-free, quota-free access for all products.

I would point out that Adam Smith wrote this in about 1776, that ``if you can buy it cheaper than you can make it, you ought to buy it; if you can make it cheaper than you can buy it, you ought to make it.'' That is what this is about, this Free Trade Agreement.

The Free Trade Agreement for Singapore works to guarantee access for U.S. firms into Singapore's industries, such as express delivery, legal services, financial services, and communications.

Congress, not the U.S. Trade Representative, has plenary power over immigration. I firmly believe that immigration policy does not belong in free trade agreements.

I thank the U.S. Trade Representative for working with the Committee on the Judiciary to address some of our bipartisan concerns about the Chile and Singapore agreements. As a member of the Committee on the Judiciary, I offered amendments to help fix problematic immigration provisions in the Chile and Singapore trade agreements. I particularly appreciate the cooperation and promise of Ambassador Zoellick that immigration provisions will not be included in future trade agreements.

Many Members have supported trade promotion authority in the past. However, if the U.S. Trade Representative includes immigration provisions in future trade agreements, support for extensions of this authority and of the free trade agreements themselves will be jeopardized. The outcry here in Congress shows that the U.S. Trade Representative cannot garner the necessary support for any future trade agreements containing immigration provisions.

The message is clear: Immigration provisions will not be tolerated in future trade agreements; that is the province of the United States Congress, according to our United States Constitution.

We must step forward and fulfill our constitutional obligations here. We have done so from the Committee on

the Judiciary. I will continue observing these trade agreements as they are negotiated and carried out.

I do appreciate the cooperation of the Trade Representative and also of our chairman, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Sensenbrenner), who has led the battle on this issue, and I intend to be part of that team. But I will vote in support of this trade agreement.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the opportunity to offer this amendment. I am going to do something slightly unusual and simply read it since it is short and it does describe what it does. It says, ``None of the funds made available in this Act may be used to engage in negotiations respecting a trade agreement with another country which creates or expands a nonimmigrant visa category authorizing the temporary entry of professionals into the United States.''

Mr. Chairman, this issue arises out of our U.S. Trade Representative's including nonimmigration status, created a whole new category; it was a ``W'' category that now we have changed into H-1Bs. It is being included now in at least discussions in other trade agreements across Central and South America. And so I rise today to offer an amendment to prevent the United States Trade Representative from negotiating changes to U.S. immigration law in trade agreements with other countries. Our Constitution in article 1, section 8, gives Congress, not the U.S. Trade Representative, plenary power over immigration.

Immigration policy does not belong in free trade agreements. My amendment provides that none of the funds appropriated by the bill may be used by the United States Trade Representative to negotiate trade agreements which create or expand a nonimmigrant visa category authorizing the temporary entry of professionals into the United States.

Recently, the U.S. Trade Representative has negotiated free trade agreements which contain immigration provisions that infringe upon the plenary power of Congress over immigration matters. The first draft of the implementing legislation for the Chile and Singapore free trade agreements included the creation of a new ``W'' category for visas for professional workers. Only after the Trade Representative received serious resistance from the Committee on the Judiciary did they agree to slightly change the immigration provisions to accommodate some, but not all, of the concerns of the Committee on the Judiciary.

The inclusion of immigration provisions in the Chile and Singapore agreements is especially troubling since the agreements will likely be used as a template for future free trade agreements, including those with Central America, Southern Africa, Australia, Morocco and others. The U.S. Trade Representative has negotiated these immigration provisions without any authority or decision to do so from Congress. With my amendment, Congress can reassert congressional primacy over immigration law.

The United States Trade Representative's practice of proposing new immigration law in the context of bilateral or multilateral trade negotiations usurps Congress' constitutional responsibility for immigration law. Trade Promotion Authority eliminates our ability to amend such proposals, taking the plenary power over immigration out of the hands of Congress. We cannot allow this to continue and must prevent the U.S. Trade Representative from agreeing to include immigration provisions in trade agreements.

The practice of including immigration provisions that usurp congressional authority is not limited to the Chile and Singapore trade agreements. The North American Free Trade Agreement and the General Agreement on Trade in Services both included such provisions. In NAFTA, the Clinton administration USTR agreed to a limitless professional worker visa category containing not even a prevailing wage requirement. In GATS, the USTR divested from future Congresses the ability to make possibly crucial modifications to the H-1B visa program.

I am not opposed to free trade agreements. In fact, I am a free trader. We need to make trade agreements with other countries, for example, to increase our agriculture exports. However, the Trade Representative does not need to change immigration law to achieve that goal. As Members of Congress, we often disagree as to what our immigration policy should be, but we are all united in the belief that the responsibility for crafting an immigration policy belongs to Congress, not the executive branch; and we take our duty seriously.

I ask Members to support my amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from California for yielding.

Just a few quick points to make on the remarks made by the gentleman. First of all, it is Congress' authority to establish immigration policy, and when we open up and provide that opportunity to the U.S. Trade Representative to inject immigration issues into any and all trade agreements that they might make, that is voluntarily giving up congressional authority that is constitutionally vested in the United States Congress.

We have a responsibility to defend our oath of office, which is to uphold the Constitution of the United States; and once we move outside of that, our Founding Fathers knew better. That is why they put that in the Constitution.

We are not allowed to amend a trade agreement. So by not being allowed to amend a trade agreement, that means that they can inject immigration issues into a trade agreement and those of us who believe in free trade, but do not believe that we should set up the authority with a Trade Representative to bring in any limit of immigration, that puts us in a position of having to decide, devil's choice, are we for the trade or are we against immigration policy?

So it is Congress' authority.

Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to withdraw the amendment.

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

Mr. Chairman, as I listen to this debate, I think there is a point that needs to be clarified and that is what the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tancredo) seeks to do is simply say that if you are a local government and you have passed an ordinance that prohibits your employees from cooperating with Federal law by providing information to, and this is the Federal law, specifically, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act of 1996. We have out here about a baker's dozen of major cities in this country that have passed an ordinance saying we are going to be a safe haven and we will not cooperate with the Federal entities or Federal law, and the ordinance says so.

So if we are going to have any linkage at all between Federal dollars and this rule of law that requires cooperation between all levels of government, we need to put some strings in here; and that is what we have done.

I was rather taken aback some years ago when the fairly new city of El Cenizo, Texas, precluded their employees from complying with Federal agents. I thought that was an anomaly; instead, it is becoming a standard.

With regard to the comment that there is no jurisdiction over the Bureau of Immigration and Customs in this committee, I do agree with that particular statement as far as the jurisdiction is concerned. But we need to have a hook in here. This is dollars, and it just says that if you have an ordinance that prohibits your people from complying with this Federal law, we are not going to allow the dollars to go then to that particular political subdivision or community.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to bring forth S. 1399, the William J. Scherle Post Office Building Redesignation Act, to honor the selfless service of a great Iowan, Bill Scherle. I want to thank the Iowa delegation in the House of Representatives for joining me and Senators Harkin and Grassley in supporting this well-deserved gesture to honor the service of a great American by their cosponsorship of my House version, H.R. 2758.

Mr. Scherle was born in Little Falls, New York in 1923. After serving this great country in the Second World War, Mr. Scherle attended Southern Methodist University and subsequently served in the United States Naval Reserve. After serving his country in the military, Mr. Scherle decided to engage in grain and livestock farming and settled in rural Mills County, Iowa. Mr. Scherle was elected to 3 consecutive terms in the Iowa House of Representatives.

In 1966, he was elected to his first of four terms in the United States House of Representatives. Bill was known as a watchdog of government waste who brought a keen eye for economic accountability to the Congress.

Bill was an outspoken and persistent voice for the members of the captured spy boat, the Pueblo, during 1968 when the boat and crew were captured by the North Koreans. Thanks to his daily reminders on the floor of Congress, the members of the Pueblo and their plight were kept at the forefront of the Congress' consciousness until they were released by the North Korean government.

Mr. Scherle promoted personal responsibility, agricultural growth and innovation, and was the embodiment of common sense conservatism during his tenure in this honorable House. After serving in the United States Department of Agriculture and as a consultant in Washington D.C., Mr. Scherle retired to Henderson, where he currently resides with his wife Jane.

Mr. Speaker, members of the House, please join me and the entire Iowa delegation in voting to designate the Glenwood, Iowa Post Office the William J. Scherle Post Office Building.

Offered By: Mr. King of Iowa

Amendment No. 12: At the end of the bill (before the short

title), insert the following:

Offered By: Mr. King of Iowa

Amendment No. 13: At the end of the bill (before the short

title), insert the following:

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute.

We have an issue before us here in this Congress. Back in 1952, there was a large flood in the Missouri River that wiped out much of the bottomland and the farms and damaged our cities, Sioux City, Council Bluffs, Omaha, all the way down through. The Pick-Sloan program was established subsequent to that by the United States Congress for these purposes: first, flood control; second, power generation; third, agriculture production; and, fourth, barge traffic. Nothing in the record says it is set aside so that we can accommodate two birds and a fish which enter into this fray.

About 10 years ago, actually it was in October of 1993, I came out here to Washington to a Midwest flood reconstruction and cleanup conference subsequent to our 1993 devastating flood. And there, Molly Beatty, the director of Fish and Wildlife, said, ``Agriculture looks upon this flood as an economic disaster. Frankly, we here at Fish and Wildlife look upon it as habitat rehabilitation.'' That is the day I learned the names of the least tern, the piping plover, and the pallid sturgeon; and that policy is manifested today.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Terry).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Osborne).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Graves).

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute to speak to that issue.

Following the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Graves), the point that he raises about the real endangered species here is the Midwestern farmer. It is not the Northwest rancher. It is the Midwestern farmer that is at risk here.

I have been on every stretch of that river from Gavins Point down to Nebraska City. It is a long way. I have been on most of it twice. There is a lot of habitat up there for the least tern, the piping plover, and the pallid sturgeon, and we are creating more and more habitat as the years go by, and we are doing it based on pretty shaky science.

As I look up and down that river, and I will tell the Members that the further south one goes, the shallower the banks are and the more likely it is to flood. When they unleash their spring rise, that means that the water backs up through our drainage system at the rate of about one mile a day, 12 to 15 miles from the River, more than 1 million acres at risk here. And just that piece alone is enough to have more economic impact than this species that was created as a matter of convenience, a marriage of convenience between the fisheries and recreational interests and the environmental interests. So the habitat along the sand bar also is conducive, and they are nesting in other tributaries.

Mr. Chairman, I concede the point of order to the Chair.

Mr. Chairman, I will concede the point of order.

Offered By: Mr. King of Iowa

Amendment No. 16: At the end of the bill (before the short

title), add the following: